How does the mind make moral judgments when the only way to satisfy one moral value is to neglect another? Moral dilemmas posed a recurrent adaptive problem for ancestral hominins, whose cooperative social life created multiple responsibilities to others. For many dilemmas, striking a balance between two conflicting values (a compromise judgment) would have promoted fitness better than neglecting one value to fully satisfy the other (an extreme judgment). We propose that natural selection favored the evolution of a cognitive system designed for making trade-offs between conflicting moral values. Its nonconscious computations respond to dilemmas by constructing “rightness functions”: temporary representations specific to the situation at hand. A rightness function represents, in compact form, an ordering of all the solutions that the mind can conceive of (whether feasible or not) in terms of moral rightness. An optimizing algorithm selects, among the feasible solutions, one with the highest level of rightness. The moral trade-off system hypothesis makes various novel predictions: People make compromise judgments, judgments respond to incentives, judgments respect the axioms of rational choice, and judgments respond coherently to morally relevant variables (such as willingness, fairness, and reciprocity). We successfully tested these predictions using a new trolley-like dilemma. This dilemma has two original features: It admits both extreme and compromise judgments, and it allows incentives—in this case, the human cost of saving lives—to be varied systematically. No other existing model predicts the experimental results, which contradict an influential dual-process model.

Broca’s area in the posterior half of the left inferior frontal gyrus has traditionally been considered an important node in the speech production network. Nevertheless, recovery of speech production has been reported, to different degrees, within a few months of damage to Broca’s area. Importantly, contemporary evidence suggests that, within Broca’s area, its posterior part (i.e. pars opercularis) plays a more prominent role in speech production than its anterior part (i.e. pars triangularis). In this study, we therefore investigated the brain activation patterns that underlie accurate speech production following stroke damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area. By combining functional MRI and 13 tasks that place varying demands on speech production, brain activation was compared in (i) seven patients of interest with damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area; (ii) 55 neurologically intact controls; and (iii) 28 patient controls with left-hemisphere damage that spared Broca’s area. When producing accurate overt speech responses, the patients with damage to the left pars opercularis activated a substantial portion of the normal bilaterally distributed system. Within this system, there was a lesion-site-dependent effect in a specific part of the right cerebellar Crus I where activation was significantly higher in the patients with damage to the left pars opercularis compared to both neurologically intact and patient controls. In addition, activation in the right pars opercularis was significantly higher in the patients with damage to the left pars opercularis relative to neurologically intact controls but not patient controls (after adjusting for differences in lesion size). By further examining how right Crus I and right pars opercularis responded across a range of conditions in the neurologically intact controls, we suggest that these regions play distinct roles in domain-general cognitive control. Finally, we show that enhanced activation in the right pars opercularis cannot be explained by release from an inhibitory relationship with the left pars opercularis (i.e. dis-inhibition) because right pars opercularis activation was positively related to left pars opercularis activation in neurologically intact controls. Our findings motivate and guide future studies to investigate (i) how exactly right Crus I and right pars opercularis support accurate speech production after damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area and (ii) whether non-invasive neurostimulation to one or both of these regions boosts speech production recovery after damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area.

In the past few decades, constitution-making processes have shifted from being undertakings performed by elites and closed off from the public to ones incorporating democratic mechanisms. Little is known, however, about the determinants of voluntary public participation and how they affect the outcomes of the deliberative process in terms of content and quality. Here, we study the process of constituent involvement in the rewriting of Chile’s constitution in 2016. A total of 106, 412 citizens in 8, 113 different local encounters voluntarily congregated in groups of ten or more to collectively determine what social rights should be considered for inclusion in the new constitution, deliberating and then articulating in the written word why should be included. We brought our data to statistical regression models at the municipality level, the results show that the main determinants associated with increasing citizen participation are educational level, engagement in politics, support for the government, and Internet access. In contrast, population density and the share of Evangelical Christians in the general population decrease citizen participation. Then, we further analyze the written arguments for each collectively-selected constitutional rights. The findings suggest that groups from socioeconomically developed municipalities (with higher educational levels and where the main economic activities are more distant from natural resources), on average, deliberate consistently more about themes, concepts, and ideas compared to groups from less developed municipalities. These results provide an empirical ground on the driver factors of voluntary citizen participation and on the benefits and disadvantages of deliberative democracy. Hence, results can inform the organization of new deliberative processes.

This dissertation explores biological and institutional factors determining human cooperation using an experimental economics approach. It includes two published articles. The first one is called “No association between genetic variants in MAOA, OXTR, and AVPR1a and cooperative strategies” and the second one is named “Effects of experience with access regimes on stewardship behaviors of small-scale fishers”. The first study explores the genetic basis of cooperative strategies in humans. To do so it assesses the association between the strategies displayed by university students in a public good game with the variability observed in three candidate genetic variants. The latter study explores the role played by formal institutions in fostering cooperative norms in groups of users of natural resources. To do this it compares the cooperative behaviors displayed by artisanal fishers in a common pool resource game framed under two scenarios. Each scenario recreates one of two access regimes these fishers face in their real life. The differences in behavior displayed between the two scenarios are suggestive of the norms and expectations that subjects have internalized under each access regime in real life

Abstract Broca’s area in the posterior half of the left inferior frontal gyrus has long been thought to be critical for speech production. The current view is that long-term speech production outcome in patients with Broca’s area damage is best explained by the combination of damage to Broca’s area and neighbouring regions including the underlying white matter, which was also damaged in Paul Broca’s two historic cases. Here, we dissociate the effect of damage to Broca’s area from the effect of damage to surrounding areas by studying long-term speech production outcome in 134 stroke survivors with relatively circumscribed left frontal lobe lesions that spared posterior speech production areas in lateral inferior parietal and superior temporal association cortices. Collectively, these patients had varying degrees of damage to one or more of nine atlas-based grey or white matter regions: Brodmann areas 44 and 45 (together known as Broca’s area), ventral premotor cortex, primary motor cortex, insula, putamen, the anterior segment of the arcuate fasciculus, uncinate fasciculus and frontal aslant tract. Spoken picture description scores from the Comprehensive Aphasia Test were used as the outcome measure. Multiple regression analyses allowed us to tease apart the contribution of other variables influencing speech production abilities such as total lesion volume and time post-stroke. We found that, in our sample of patients with left frontal damage, long-term speech production impairments (lasting beyond 3 months post-stroke) were solely predicted by the degree of damage to white matter, directly above the insula, in the vicinity of the anterior part of the arcuate fasciculus, with no contribution from the degree of damage to Broca’s area (as confirmed with Bayesian statistics). The effect of white matter damage cannot be explained by a disconnection of Broca’s area, because speech production scores were worse after damage to the anterior arcuate fasciculus with relative sparing of Broca’s area than after damage to Broca’s area with relative sparing of the anterior arcuate fasciculus. Our findings provide evidence for three novel conclusions: (i) Broca’s area damage does not contribute to long-term speech production outcome after left frontal lobe strokes; (ii) persistent speech production impairments after damage to the anterior arcuate fasciculus cannot be explained by a disconnection of Broca’s area; and (iii) the prior association between persistent speech production impairments and Broca’s area damage can be explained by co-occurring white matter damage, above the insula, in the vicinity of the anterior part of the arcuate fasciculus.

Aging is a physiological process accompanied by cognitive decline, principally in memory and executive functions. Alterations in the connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) have been found to participate in cognitive decline, as well as in several neurocognitive disorders. The DMN has antisynchronic activity with attentional networks (task-positive networks (TPN)), which are critical to executive function and memory. Findings pointing to the regulation of the DMN via activation of TPN suggest that it can be used as a strategy for neuroprotection. Meditation is a noninvasive and nonpharmacological technique proven to increase meta-awareness, a cognitive ability which involves the control of both networks. In this review, we discuss the possibility of facilitating healthy aging through the regulation of networks through meditation. We propose that by practicing specific types of meditation, cognitive decline could be slowed, promoting a healthy lifestyle, which may enhance the quality of life for the elderly.

Esta tesis consistió en modelar empíricamente el comportamiento del consumidor en el mercado de autos y el comportamiento de viaje de los individuos en el ámbito urbano. Para el primer caso, en particular se evalúa el impacto y la eficacia de diferentes incentivos fiscales y el efecto contrario del descuento en vehículos convencionales en la compra de vehículos eléctricos e híbridos. La investigación tiene como foco de análisis los países en vía de desarrollo, para lo cual se toma como caso de estudio la ciudad de Santiago de Chile y se estimaron modelos elección discreta Logit Multinomial y Logit Mixto, usando datos de preferencias declaradas. Respecto al comportamiento de viaje de los usuarios en el ámbito urbano, se investiga el impacto que genera el uso mixto de suelo y la densidad de puntos de interés en zonas de localización residencial en el número de viaje esperado para tres dimensiones de viaje (viajes de subsistencia, viajes de mantenimiento y discrecionales) y tres modos de transporte (viajes en transporte público, particular o privado y no motorizado). El análisis emplea los datos de viajes más recientes de la encuesta Origen Destino de Santiago de Chile (EOD-2012) y puntos de interés (atributos zonales de localización) extraídos de OpenStreetMap. Esta tesis se desarrolla en formato de dos artículos. El primero titulado “Impact of fiscal incentives in the consumption of low emission vehicles”, contribuye en la literatura en tres aspectos: (a) Evalúa el efecto que los subsidios en el precio de compra tienen sobre la preferencia por los vehículos con bajas emisiones, explícitamente contabilizando el efecto en el ingreso. (b) Evalúa específicamente el atractivo relativo entre una exención del IVA frente a la exención del impuesto de compra, así como la devolución del impuesto sobre la renta, para la adopción de vehículos eléctricos e híbridos. (c) Propone acciones y recomendaciones concretas de posibles políticas públicas, con una mayor aceptación entre los compradores potenciales, con el objetivo de reducir la emisión de gases de efecto invernadero derivados de vehículos de uso privado, obtenidos directamente de los consumidores potenciales. El Segundo artículo titulado “Impact of mixed land use and density of interest points in travel behavior. Empirical study, the case of Santiago, Chile”, ofrece dos aportes a la literatura: (a) Aporte metodológico, el cual consiste en determinar la distribución de uso de suelo de la ciudad, así como la distribución de las densidades de puntos de interés (atributos zonales de localización), con datos abiertos, que luego pueden ser usados para la estimación de modelos de generación de viajes, replicable en cualquier lugar a diferentes escalas. (b), Determinar el tipo de impacto que presenta el uso mixto del suelo, así como los atributos zonales de localización en la generación de viajes en las tres dimensiones para los tres modos de transporte, siendo un nuevo insumo que se suma a las evidencias empíricas de la literatura y en la posibilidad de recomendar políticas públicas, contextualizadas a las realidades de las características de las diversas ciudades de países no desarrollados, bajo la premisa de crecimiento inteligente y el desarrollo compacto de las ciudades

This introductory theoretical framework describes the existing literature on the approaches that moral psychology has followed in recent years. Specifically, the advantages and disadvantages of constructing this discipline will be exposed using theories and methodologies from other areas such as: neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and microeconomics, which have visions that allow us to understand how individuals respond to their environment and allow us to build models around how and why moral intuitions arise. We will focus on the evolutionary vision that allows us to understand morality as rules that solve certain ancestral problems that are believed to be relevant to our ancestors. In this context, intuitions have an important role in cooperation and consequently in the reproductive success of humans, for this reason we will change the paradigm that exists in the literature on reason vs. intuition. In which intuitions are thought of irrational behavior due to their close link to emotions. We demonstrate that intuitions are rational and explore their functionality from an evolutionary perspective evoking the moral emotion of jealousy

AbstractFunctional imaging studies of neurotypical adults report activation in the left putamen during speech production. The current study asked how stroke survivors with left putamen damage are able to produce correct spoken responses during a range of speech production tasks. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, activation during correct speech production responses was assessed in 5 stroke patients with circumscribed left dorsal striatal lesions, 66 stroke patient controls who did not have focal left dorsal striatal lesions, and 54 neurotypical adults. As a group, patients with left dorsal striatal damage (our patients of interest) showed higher activation than neurotypical controls in the left superior parietal cortex during successful speech production. This effect was not specific to patients with left dorsal striatal lesions as we observed enhanced activation in the same region in some patient controls and also in more error-prone neurotypical participants. Our results strongly suggest that enhanced left superior parietal activation supports speech production in diverse challenging circumstances, including those caused by stroke damage. They add to a growing body of literature indicating how upregulation within undamaged parts of the neural systems already recruited by neurotypical adults contributes to recovery after stroke.