“In the present study, they reduced brain activity in the same region in the rat by injecting a local anesthetic and observed that rats then stopped avoiding to harm another rat for candy. "That humans and rats use the same brain region to prevent harm to others is striking. It shows that the moral motivation that keeps us from harming our fellow humans is evolutionary old, deeply ingrained in the biology of our brain and shared with other animals," says Dr. Valeria Gazzola, one of the senior authors of the study and group leader at the NIN.”