Magnets could skew our sense of right, wrong

London: Scientists have found a way to switch off your sense of right and wrong - by using magnets.

When special kinds of magnets are held up to a person's head they can skew the neural centre responsible for morality, tests showed.

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) first asked a group of volunteers to rate actions on a scale from one (morally forbidden) to seven (permissible), the journal Proceedings of the US National Science Academy reports.

Each subject was then asked similar questions while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was being applied to their brain's right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ).

The researchers, led by Liane Young from MIT, found that participants were less likely to believe something that harms another is wrong, according to the Daily Mail.

It means that one day it may be possible to control people's sense of morality and convince them to things they otherwise wouldn't.

Researchers found that they could not switch off your morality sensors altogether - but they could drastically alter what you believe to be permissible.