Moral decision making under modafinil: a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind crossover fMRI study

Ngo, Thao; Ghio, Marta; Kuchinke, Lars; Roser, Patrik; Bellebaum, Christian

doi:10.1007/s00213-019-05250-y

Original Investigation
Published: 29 April 2019

Moral decision making under modafinil: a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind crossover fMRI study

Thao Ngo¹,
Marta Ghio¹,
Lars Kuchinke²,
Patrik Roser^3,4 &
Christian Bellebaum ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3212-2478¹

Psychopharmacology volume 236, pages 2747–2759 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Rationale

Modafinil is increasingly used by healthy humans as a neuroenhancer in order to improve cognitive functioning. Research on the effects of modafinil on cognition yielded most consistent findings for complex tasks relying on the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Objectives

The present randomized placebo-controlled double-blind crossover study aimed to investigate the effect of a single dose of modafinil (200 mg) on everyday moral decision making and its neural correlates, which have been linked to the ventro- and dorsomedial PFC.

Methods

Healthy male study participants were presented with short stories describing everyday moral or neutral dilemmas. Each moral dilemma required a decision between a personal desire and a moral standard, while the neutral dilemmas required decisions between two personal desires. The participants underwent this task twice, once under the influence of modafinil and once under placebo. Brain activity associated with the processing of the dilemmas was assessed by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Results

For the processing of moral vs. neutral dilemmas, activations were found in a network of brain regions linked to social cognitive processes including, among others, the bilateral medial PFC, the insula, and the precuneus. Modafinil was found to increase the number of moral decisions and had no effect on brain activity associated with dilemma processing. Exploratory analyses revealed reduced response-locked activity in the dorsomedial PFC for moral compared to neutral dilemmas under modafinil, but not under placebo.

Conclusions

The results are discussed in terms of altered predictions of others’ emotional states under modafinil, possibly due to higher processing efficiency.

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Funding

We would like to thank the Mercator Foundation for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

Department of Biological Psychology, Institute for Experimental Psychology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany
Thao Ngo, Marta Ghio & Christian Bellebaum
Methods and Evaluation, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Lars Kuchinke
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, LWL University Hospital, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Patrik Roser
Department of Addictive Disorders, Psychiatric Services Aargau AG, Brugg, Switzerland
Patrik Roser

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Thao Ngo
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Marta Ghio
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Lars Kuchinke
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Patrik Roser
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Christian Bellebaum
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Correspondence to Christian Bellebaum.

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Ngo, T., Ghio, M., Kuchinke, L. et al. Moral decision making under modafinil: a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind crossover fMRI study. Psychopharmacology 236, 2747–2759 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-019-05250-y

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Received: 26 September 2018
Accepted: 15 April 2019
Published: 29 April 2019
Issue Date: 01 September 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-019-05250-y

Keywords

Moral reasoning
Decision making
Modafinil
Prefrontal cortex
fMRI