The Brains of Violent Males

Aim: To configure if playing violent video games affects the structure and functioning of the adolescent brain.

Recently there have been many school shootings throughout the United States and the world. Most of these shooting were all connected with the shooter being on anti-depressant medications. In an article called “Medicated to death: by SSRI’s and mass killings” by Lisa Arbercheski, she writes that SSRI’s are linked to the cause of most shootings. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) is one of the most popular medications taken for depression in many countries. Some are known by their popular names like Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, and Paxil. These medications have many tests done and none of them prove that they cure depression or mood swings. Could these medications be connected to some of the most recent shootings like the one in Newton, Connecticut? The case is that these medications are causing adolescents to go on suicidal rampage shootings and the United States is trying to play it off like the medications have no connection.

One of the common things people believe is that depression leads to violent thoughts and actions. According to psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin depression has absolutely no connection to violent acts. There was a study done on thirty-one drugs that were found in connection with violent acts and mass shootings. Out of the thirty-one drugs in the test, five of the top ten were antidepressant drugs. The five drugs that were found to be associated with violent acts were Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor, and Pristiq. Dr. Peter Breggin says mass shootings have started showing up only since SSRI drugs have started being sold and prescribed. Another two of the top ten drugs were prescribed to people that have ADHD, which means that these drugs are being

The brain can be affected by damage and cause behavior to be expressed differently in every person. Events such as a car crash or childhood abuse can affect brain development and function. Damage to certain areas of the brain can have a variety of effects. The hippocampus controls emotions and is associated with memory, and the frontal lobe is a brain cortex that controls motor functions, problem solving, memory, language, judgments, social and sexual behavior and impulse. When the frontal lobe or hippocampus is affected, a person’s emotion can be out of their control. In criminal cases, brain damage can affect the sentencing of a violent criminal, but to what extent should these abnormalities play a role in their conviction? Much research has been conducted in order to determine the effect that brain abnormalities should have on the conviction of violent criminals. A psychiatrist at New York University, Dr. Lewis, has conducted a study on death-row inmates, how their brains work and what affect the damage had on their conviction. By doing so Dr. Lewis paved the way for other researchers, such as Kent Kiehl and Jonathan H. Pincus to study the brains of violent criminals looking for a answer as to whether or not these criminals should be incarcerated. Over time research has been conducted focusing on mental illnesses and brain damage as the cause of violent acts instead of it being just premeditated murder. Many believe brain damage or mental illness should have no affect on

The amygdala of psychopaths have has been found to be hypoactive during fear conditioning (Birbaumer et al., 2005), moral decision-making (Glenn, Raine, & Schug, 2009), and social cooperation (Rilling et al., 2007). As expected, studies have also found the amygdala to be hypoactive in response to fearful faces or other affect-related activity (e.g. Carré et al., 2013; Kiehl et al., 2001). Nevertheless, Müller et al. (2003) found that psychopaths had increased activation in the amygdala (in addition to increased prefrontal activation) when viewing negative content (e.g. pictures of threatening animals, wounded people) which they interpreted as reflecting abnormal prefrontal – amygdala communication.” (Umbach et al., 2015,

This documentary specifies that there is no easy answer to what is going on inside the mind of killers, and we cannot simply place these individuals into “neat diagnostic boxes” that explain why their actions turned so violent. However, the investigators present research studying different avenues regarding ways to “predict” the likelihood that an individual will commit violent crime, will maintaining that no method is perfect. Throughout the presentation, viewers are offered mountains of research highlighting a mix of nature and nurture ranging from neurologists from Harvard studying brain patterns affected by genetics, to psychologists studying maternal care and attachment during infancy.

The injury sent a three-and-a-half foot-long tamping iron into his head, shattering his upper jaw and destroying his left ventromedial frontal cortex. Phineas Gage recovered from his brain injury, but his personality underwent a dramatic change described by those who knew him as a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde transformation. In more modern times we have seen similar results from brain injuries with Antonio Damasio, who had his left and right orbit and lower mesial cortices, including the prefrontal area, removed due to cancer. While he recovered from the surgery, his personality, like Phineas Gage’s underwent a dramatic change and his ability to morally judge situations became poor leading to a demise in his life and relationships. These cases have shown that damage to the frontal lobe changes how a person thinks and acts. We have seen that deficits in the frontal lobe are also commonly seen in people who are depressed, who experience chronic stress, in suicide victims, sociopaths and in incarcerated criminals. Since we can see that these brain changes affect personality and even life choices, it is not that far fetched to think that these same brain defects can lead to criminal behavior. For example, the prefrontal cortex is an area of the brain that acts to receive input from other areas of the brain and uses this information to make decisions. If this area is

In the 1980s the very first functional brain scanning study of killers was carried out by British neuroscientist, Professor Adrian Raine. The Professor and his team scanned the brain of many killers and found that all the scans were quite similar (Appendix D); they then compared them to the brain scans of people who weren’t convicted murderers (Appendix E). These scans support Dr Richard Davidsons findings related to the anterior cingulated cortex, orbital frontal cortex, and amygdale. The results showed that serial killers appear to have brains which make them more prone to anger and rage and unable to control themselves (Davidson. 2000). Raine suggested that childhood abuse may have caused physical damage to the brain, which caused the subjects to be predisposed to violent tendencies, however, only a small proportion of those who had a terrible childhood grew up to become murderers. In 1993, a family from the Netherlands found that all the men had a history of violence. After 15 years of research, it was discovered that all the men lacked the same gene which produces an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) which regulates the levels of neurotransmitters involved in impulse control (n/a. 2015). Jim Fallon, a professor of psychiatry in California, discovered that there were many murderers in his family tree and so decided to have himself genetically

Introduction: This investigation examines the biological causes for serial killers’ psychopathic tendencies and examines those same biological factors in both men and women to find the correlation between a higher rate of male serial killers and the biology behind their actions. It is imperitave to first know what a serial killer is, and what makes them such a cold fish. There are sections of the brain that do have control over a human being’s personality, where that individual can either develop into an average person or join the other one percent of psychopaths living in the world today (due to physical damage or chemical imbalance in the brain). These specific sections of the brain are different in males then in females, some components of the brain vary in size etc. between sexes. It is crucial to have all these pieces, with this information its then possible to form a conlusion to the surfaced question.

Many clinical studies have been used to suggest a role for serotonin in the propensity for depression or suicidal tendencies. Most of these studies measured the level of serotonin in the CSF in certain individuals. Results established a link between reduced serotonin neurotransmission and aggression, impulsivity, depression, and suicidal tendencies. Other data, using markers in presynaptic and postsynaptic serotonergic neurons have shown that reduction in serotonin neurotransmission is a biochemical "risk factor" for suicide (1).

Adam Lanza, a 20 year old young adult, was a frequent player of “call of duty”. He is the reason why twenty-seven lives were lost on December 14, 2012. Lanza open fired at kids and adults inside Sandy Hook Elementary, injuring many, and killing twenty plus people. Subsequently, killing his mother and himself. Investigations show that Adam Lanza used the game “call of duty” for his training. Researchers are convinced that intense gaming can disrupt the mind into thinking about anger and aggression. A college psychologist held a test to help prove this theory. He first registered the behavior of forty-six undergraduates, then had them play “Mortal Kombat” for fifteen minutes and recorded their behavior afterwards. The results show that the students acted more audacious when the game was over. Scientists predict that as more games release with better graphics, that the violence will only sustain at higher rates.

Due to its primary role in processing memory and emotional reactions, over the last decade and a half psychologists have been linking the amygdala to psychopathy. It is involved in aversive conditioning and instrumental learning and is thus involved in all the processes that, when impaired, produce the same functional impairments displayed by psychopaths. Two famous studies conducted by Tiihonen and Kiehl respectively have confirmed this. Tiihonen used a volumetric MRI to test and confirm the positive correlation between low amygdaloid volume and a high degree of psychopathy in violent criminals (measured by the Hare checklist-revised) while Kiehl used a functional MRI to prove reduced amygdala response during an emotional memory task in individuals who scored high on the Hare checklist-revised. However, both these studies along with numerous others were conducted using violent offenders as subjects rather than individuals with psychopathy. Although many psychopaths do exhibit violent tendencies, not all violent offenders are necessarily psychopaths. A study conducted by Raine is one of the few that did focus only on individuals exhibiting psychopathy. In his study Raine was able to show reduced prefrontal grey matter in his test subjects. Unfortunately though, he was unable to differentiate between grey matter in different regions of the prefrontal cortex. It is however clear that there is one region of the frontal cortex that could be

Archer, Dale. “Violence, The Media and Your Brain.” 02 September 2013. www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201309/violence-the-media-and-your-brain. Accessed 1 March 2017.

It is very rare these days to turn on the news and not hear about a crime or a murder. Crime is a common occurrence yet many times it is difficult to understand how someone could bring themselves to do these things. It does seem to make any sense why a young handsome man from a good family would want to kill someone and then be able to go through with it. This leads one to wonder if the brains of people who behave in socially unacceptable ways are different from everyone else's brains. There is a substantial amount of evidence that suggests some criminals do have differences in their brains that most likely contribute to their behavior. Many of these individuals have Antisocial Personality Disorder and

The Anatomy of Violence presents the latest findings in the field of biological psychology and human behavior, focusing on brain chemistry, as it relates to human behavior, and offers great insight on how brains of those who commit acts of violence or crime differ from those who do not. Mr. Raine provides solid scientific data regarding the ways in which brain chemistry differs and how injuries can alter personality using medical MRI and fMRI and various neurotransmitter studies. A clear connection between human biology and behavior emerges, bringing