During the last decade, vegetarianism has received significant attention in the field of social neuroscience. The main motivators for being vegetarian are health and animal welfare/rights, followed by environmental concerns. Empathy toward nonconspecifics has different neural representations among individuals with different feeding habits, possibly reflecting different motivational factors and beliefs. Comparisons between individuals with different dietary habits show the role of the action observation-execution matching system in social cognition, which enables humans to interact not only with their conspecifics, but also with species in phylogenetic proximity.This chapter reviews the main findings related to brain functions in vegetarians who have chosen a meat-free diet for ethical motivation and empathy toward nonhuman animals. It also provides a critical evaluation of the current understanding of neural processes involved in the choice of vegetarianism (including veganism) and its echo for public society to inspire new research directions.
Filippi, M., Riccitelli, G., Vacchi, L., Rocca, M. (2017). Cognitive Processes Underlying Vegetarianism as Assessed by Brain Imaging. In Vegetarian and Plant-Based Diets in Health and Disease Prevention (pp. 71-91). Elsevier Inc. [10.1016/B978-0-12-803968-7.00005-8].
Cognitive Processes Underlying Vegetarianism as Assessed by Brain Imaging
Vacchi L.;
2017
Abstract
During the last decade, vegetarianism has received significant attention in the field of social neuroscience. The main motivators for being vegetarian are health and animal welfare/rights, followed by environmental concerns. Empathy toward nonconspecifics has different neural representations among individuals with different feeding habits, possibly reflecting different motivational factors and beliefs. Comparisons between individuals with different dietary habits show the role of the action observation-execution matching system in social cognition, which enables humans to interact not only with their conspecifics, but also with species in phylogenetic proximity.This chapter reviews the main findings related to brain functions in vegetarians who have chosen a meat-free diet for ethical motivation and empathy toward nonhuman animals. It also provides a critical evaluation of the current understanding of neural processes involved in the choice of vegetarianism (including veganism) and its echo for public society to inspire new research directions.
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