cingulate gyrus
...we found increased activation in brain regions [including...] posterior cingulate gyrus activation in post-therapy response to forgivability judgments. [...] Empathic and forgivability judgments activate specific regions of the human brain[....]
Or to put it another way, the cingulate gyrus (a ridge in the brain that partly wraps around the corpus callosum) appears to be involved in making decisions about judging whether a person or action can be forgiven.
I was vaguely aware that "cingulate" was a word before, and I'm generally not posting here about words I've seen for a long time but didn't know the meaning of 'til now. And I'm certainly not going to post an entry for every anatomy term that I haven't seen before--even the brief Wikipedia entry for cingulate gyrus contains a dozen such words (including "fornicate gyrus," which isn't what it sounds like). But I thought it was interesting that there's a particular region of the brain associated with forgiveness.
I also thought it was interesting that various nonscientific articles refer to the region simply as the "cingulate," leaving out "gyrus." I can't tell whether that's accurate terminology or not; there are other parts of the brain whose names also include "cingulate," which is an adjective meaning (sez MW3) "having a girdle especially of transverse bands or markings."
Anyway, the other reason I thought it was worth mentioning here is that every time I see "cingulate" I think "Cingular." I wonder if the people who came up with that brand name were familiar with the term "cingulate," and if not, what led them to put a C at the beginning.