Brain region responsible for effortful helping behavior

The research, published in Current Biology, shows that effortful altruistic behavior –choices people make that help others – takes place in a different part of the brain from that used to make physically demanding choices that help oneself. The area identified, called the anterior cingulate cortex gyrus (ACCg), is located towards the front of the brain. It is known to play a role in social behavior, but has not previously been linked to putting in effort to help others.

Interestingly, the researchers found that the ACCg is not activated when individuals make effortful decisions that only benefit themselves.

In the study, the researchers worked with 38 participants aged between 18 and 35. All participants were each asked to take part in a effortful decision-making task and to complete a questionnaire to self-assess their empathy levels. The participants made decisions while undergoing a functional MRI scan. This identifies different areas of the brain which are activated while people made decisions to either "work" or "rest" to help themselves or someone else. If they chose the work option, they had to squeeze a device that measured their grip strength.

The team found that the ACCg was the only brain area that showed the effort pattern when people made these decisions to help someone else, but it did not activate at all when they made decisions to put in effort to reward themselves. Intriguingly those people who had said they were very high in empathy had the strongest effort patterns in ACCg. The researchers also found that those people who represented effort more strongly in the ACCg also went on to put in more grip strength to help out.

Ref:

Dr Patricia Lockwood et al,Distinct neural representations for prosocial and self-benefitting effort,Current Biology,10.1016/j.cub.2022.08.010