Riding the Charity High

Not only does it look like pure altruism might truly exist, we might just be prewired for it:

That good feeling you get by writing a check to your favorite charity could be your brain patting itself on the back.

Reporting in Friday's issue of the journal Science, a team of economists and psychologists at the University of Oregon have found that donating money to charity activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure.

The study represents a major advance in the young field of neuroeconomics, a collaboration between economists and psychologists to determine how the brain directs the way people handle money.

Read the whole article at the Chicago Tribune.