How the brain judges harm: functional networks among intentional and accidental moral evaluation

Evaluating others’ actions requires integrating their intentions with the outcomes they produce. Several studies have investigated the neural processes supporting this aspect of moral judgment, but findings remain heterogeneous. We conducted a pooled Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of fMRI studies comparing evaluations of intentional and accidental harm, which is preregistered at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2HTFU. Following a systematic search on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science (last search: October 2024), eight studies met our inclusion criteria, yielding a total of 18 contrasts. Eligible studies reported whole-brain group analyses with stereotactic coordinates for direct contrasts between intentional and accidental harm. Studies were excluded if they focused on patient populations or lacked such contrasts. The meta-analysis identified two regions of consistent activation: the right amygdala and the left hippocampus. To better characterize their functional roles, we performed meta-analytic connectivity modeling and resting-state connectivity analyses. The amygdala showed reliable associations with regions involved in salience detection and affective regulation, supporting its established role in encoding harm-related signals. The hippocampus exhibited a broad connectivity profile, suggesting possible roles in interpersonal harm evaluation, such as episodic simulation, contextual reconstruction, and schema-based reasoning. These results confirm key aspects of existing models of moral judgment and offer novel insights by highlighting the involvement of the hippocampus, a region not typically emphasized in intent-based moral evaluation.