A thoughtful addition to the growing debate over public and private morality. Looks at lying and deception in law, family, medicine, government.

Accompanied with various opinions across cultures, truth telling is a major debate in bioethics. Many studies have focused on attitudes toward truth disclosure. We intend to review several relevant research studies, and discuss the issue through a clinical case consultation. It seems that while "the right to know" is emphasized in bioethics, in some cultural contexts, health professionals fear communicating bad news. The patients may not receive information directly, because it is believed that the truth may make the patient feel (...) hopeless and unable to cope with the problem. Nevertheless, some believe that sharing information may strengthen a trusting relationship between patients and medical professionals. Extensive efforts are in process in some societies to make patient rights to know the truth as a natural part of medical practice. However, in some cases, the principles of respect for patient autonomy require us to accept patient's refusal to know the truth, with the provision that he assigns someone to receive information and make medical decisions on his behalf. In conclusion, it is suggested that healthcare professionals should not act on a unique presumption in all cases and they should explore what the real interest of patient is, in order to respect individual autonomy. (shrink)

Mentalizing refers to our ability to read the mental states of other agents and engages many neural processes. The brain's mirror system allows us to share the emotions of others. Through perspective taking, we can infer what a person currently believes about the world given their point of view. Finally, the human brain has the unique ability to represent the mental states of the self and the other and the relationship between these mental states, making possible the communication of ideas.

Self-enhancement is the biasing of one’s view of oneself in a positive direction. The brain correlates of self-enhancement remain unclear though it has been reported that the medial prefrontal cortex may be important for producing self-enhancing responses. Previous studies have not examined whether the neural correlates of self-enhancement depend on the particular domain in which individuals are enhancing themselves. Both moralistic and egoistic words were presented to participants while transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to the MPFC, precuneus or in a (...) sham orientation. Participants were asked to make decisions as to the words describing themselves, some of which were positive and some of which were negative. It was found the MPFC TMS significantly disrupted egoistic self-enhancement when TMS was delivered to the MPFC. Judgments involving moralistic words were not influenced by TMS. These data provide further evidence that MPFC is involved in self-enhancement, and that the role of MPFC may be selective in this regard. (shrink)