ABSTRACT
A headline from the science section of the New York Times, dated 24 May 1944, reads ‘Old accident points to brain’s moral center’. Briefly, the article concerns a railwayman who, in 1848, was struck by a long metal rod which entered under his left cheek, went behind his left eye and exited through the top of his brain. He survived and remained able to take rational decisions, but he was ‘a different man’ in the sense that he had become ‘unable to make moral judgements’. A philosopher and a cognitive scientist had examined the skull with the aid of ‘advanced computer brain-imaging techniques’ and stated that it offers
compelling evidence that the human brain has a specialized region for making personal and social decisions and that this region, located in the frontal lobes at the top of the brain, is connected to deeper brain regions that store emotional memories. When this higher brain region is damaged in a certain way…a person undergoes a personality change and can no longer make moral decisions.
