Brain Struct Funct (2012) 217:783–796 DOI 10.1007/s00429-012-0380-y O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E Parsing the neural correlates of moral cognition: ALE meta-analysis on morality, theory of mind, and empathy Danilo Bzdok • Leonhard Schilbach • Kai Vogeley • Karla Schneider • Angela R. Laird • Robert Langner • Simon B. Eickhoff Received: 7 October 2011 / Accepted: 7 January 2012 / Published online: 24 January 2012 Springer-Verlag 2012 Abstract Morally judicious behavior forms the fabric of human sociality. Here, we sought to investigate neural activity associated with different facets of moral thought. Previous research suggests that the cognitive and emotional sources of moral decisions might be closely related to theory of mind, an abstract-cognitive skill, and empathy, a rapid-emotional skill. That is, moral decisions are thought to crucially refer to other persons’ representation of intentions and behavioral outcomes as well as (vicariously experienced) emotional states. We thus hypothesized that moral decisions might be implemented in brain areas engaged in ‘theory of mind’ and empathy. This assumption was tested by conducting a large-scale activation likeli- hood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies, which assessed 2,607 peak coordinates from 247 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00429-012-0380-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. D. Bzdok K. Schneider R. Langner S. B. Eickhoff Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical School, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany D. Bzdok R. Langner S. B. Eickhoff Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-2), Research Center Ju¨lich, Ju¨lich, Germany D. Bzdok K. Schneider R. Langner S. B. Eickhoff Ju¨lich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), Translational Brain Medicine, Aachen, Germany L. Schilbach Max-Planck-Institute for Neurological Research, Cologne, Germany L. Schilbach K. Vogeley Department of Psychiatry, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany experiments in 1,790 participants. The brain areas that were consistently involved in moral decisions showed more convergence with the ALE analysis targeting theory of mind versus empathy. More speciﬁcally, the neuroto- pographical overlap between morality and empathy dis- favors a role of affective sharing during moral decisions. Ultimately, our results provide evidence that the neural network underlying moral decisions is probably domain- global and might be dissociable into cognitive and affective sub-systems. Keywords Empathy Moral cognition Social cognition Theory of mind (ToM) Meta-analysis ALE Introduction Moral behavior is a building block of human societies and has classically been thought to be based on rational K. Vogeley Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3), Research Center Ju¨lich, Ju¨lich, Germany A. R. Laird Research Imaging Institute, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX, USA S. B. Eickhoff Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology, Heinrich Heine University, Du¨sseldorf, Germany S. B. Eickhoff (&) Institut fu¨r Neurowissenschaften und Medizin (INM-2), Forschungszentrum Ju¨lich GmbH, 52425 Ju¨lich, Germany e-mail: S.Eickhoff@fz-juelich.de 123