The science put the focus back on why some people share more than others. Given this, it was discovered what the selfishness switch in the brain and how it is activated to be more generous.
The project focused on analyzing a group of people who handled money to measure their altruism. The researchers focused on observing their decisions and how they changed when intervening in the coordination between two areas of the brain.
There, one of the most important findings since under certain conditions, some participants became more likely to share.
How was the study
He study was published on February 10, 2026 in the magazine PLOS Biology. The work was led by Jie Hu of East China Normal University, together with colleagues from the University of Zurich.
The researchers worked with 44 participants, who completed 540 decisions within a modified version of the Dictator Gamea widely used experiment to measure how one person distributes money between themselves and another.
In order to analyze their behavior when sharing with others, the participants received transcranial alternating current stimulation over frontal and parietal regions of the brain.
The objective was to see if Improving synchronization between these areas also changed behavior. In this way, when the synchrony between both areas grew, the participants were more willing to share and offer money.
Additionally, they were also seen to be more likely to make more altruistic decisions, even if it meant keeping less.
How the experiment works and what areas of the brain come into play
The work focused on two key regions that had already appeared in previous studies on social decisions: frontal and parietal areas.
The difference in working with both was going from observing to intervening directly in the process.
In that sense, instead of looking at which part of the brain was activated when someone shared, the team He focused on modifying that coordination to see if the behavior also moved with it.
Inside the studythe researchers talk about the results as a connection between regions that, when working more synchronically, can tilt certain decisions toward a less selfish response.
The study makes it clear that the Generosity does not depend only on education, values or social context. It can also rely on brain mechanisms that intervene when a person decides whether to share or keep more.
This does not mean that a stimulation session makes a person healthy, but rather that the effect was moderate and does not allow the result to be directly transferred to daily life.
