When seeing things in a different light: A new scaling rule for context dependent moral decisions

How do we make choices in a world that is constantly changing? For instance, how do we know whether a surface in a visual scene is part of an object or the background? Does that decision depend upon the overall illumination patterns at different times of the day? Or, even more elusive, how do we solve moral dilemmas? How can we tell “right” from “wrong”? And, furthermore, do our moral perceptions depend on context? What do vision and moral have in common? Our recent results are showing how visual and moral decision making are both shaped by the same gain control mechanisms that represent value in a relative rather than absolute manner. Both processes are extremely influenced by context and use similar algorithms based on divisive normalization, an adaptive form of gain control that operates as a general mechanism for sensory and cognitive computations in the brain.