A striking passage from the paper: "Relative to other species, humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate—we are willing to incur personal costs to benefit others, including strangers, and people who we will never meet again [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] (see Glossary). These abilities are thought to arise from complex systems of shared moral intuitions about what is “right” or “good” that are culturally transmitted across space and time [8, 9]."
This is a paper on the human prefrontal cortex in Nature Neuropsychoparmacology: The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective. Zoh, Chang & Crockett; August 19, 2021 – https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5
It's a technical review paper on the brain structure from which the ability to cooperate arrives. I'm unable to judge its soundness and validity but it's an unusually beautiful paper; The abstract itself is beautiful enough that I'll add it here:
Abstract: Humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate relative to many other species. We review the neural mechanisms supporting human cooperation, focusing on the prefrontal cortex. One key feature of human social life is the prevalence of cooperative norms that guide social behavior and prescribe punishment for noncompliance. Taking a comparative approach, we consider shared and unique aspects of cooperative behaviors in humans relative to nonhuman primates, as well as divergences in brain structure that might support uniquely human aspects of cooperation. We highlight a medial prefrontal network common to nonhuman primates and humans supporting a foundational process in cooperative decision-making: valuing outcomes for oneself and others. This medial prefrontal network interacts with lateral prefrontal areas that are thought to represent cooperative norms and modulate value representations to guide behavior appropriate to the local social context. Finally, we propose that more recently evolved anterior regions of prefrontal cortex play a role in arbitrating between cooperative norms across social contexts, and suggest how future research might fruitfully examine the neural basis of norm arbitration.
This is a paper on the human prefrontal cortex in Nature Neuropsychoparmacology: The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective. Zoh, Chang & Crockett; August 19, 2021 – https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5
It's a technical review paper on the brain structure from which the ability to cooperate arrives. I'm unable to judge its soundness and validity but it's an unusually beautiful paper; The abstract itself is beautiful enough that I'll add it here:
Abstract: Humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate relative to many other species. We review the neural mechanisms supporting human cooperation, focusing on the prefrontal cortex. One key feature of human social life is the prevalence of cooperative norms that guide social behavior and prescribe punishment for noncompliance. Taking a comparative approach, we consider shared and unique aspects of cooperative behaviors in humans relative to nonhuman primates, as well as divergences in brain structure that might support uniquely human aspects of cooperation. We highlight a medial prefrontal network common to nonhuman primates and humans supporting a foundational process in cooperative decision-making: valuing outcomes for oneself and others. This medial prefrontal network interacts with lateral prefrontal areas that are thought to represent cooperative norms and modulate value representations to guide behavior appropriate to the local social context. Finally, we propose that more recently evolved anterior regions of prefrontal cortex play a role in arbitrating between cooperative norms across social contexts, and suggest how future research might fruitfully examine the neural basis of norm arbitration.