ALTRUISM: THE TENDENCY TO HELP OTHERS WITHOUT OBVIOUS BENEFIT TO ONESELF...LINKED TO AN AREA CALLED THE POSTERIOR SUPERIOR TEMPORAL SULCUS.

Using brain scans, the US investigators found this region related to a person's real-life unselfish behavior. The Duke University Medical Center study on 45 volunteers is published in Nature Neuroscience. The participants were asked to disclose how often they engaged in different helping behaviors, such as doing charity work, and were also asked to play a computer game designed to measure altruism. Researcher Dr. Scott Huettel explained, "Although understanding the function of this brain region may not necessarily identify what drives people like Mother Theresa, it may give clues to the origins of important social behaviors like altruism."

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Stanford University School of Medicine

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Stanford University
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