The scientists did not include any person who had been convicted of a crime that could have involved an accidental death. Importantly, they excluded individuals with a psychotic disorder and any who had lost consciousness for more than 2 hours as the result of a traumatic brain injury. people convicted of nonviolent or minimally violent crime (130 individuals).people convicted of violent crime who had not carried out a homicide (475 individuals).people convicted of homicide (203 individuals).In total, the scientists took data from 808 adult male inmates each participant fitted into one of three groups: To remedy this, in their latest project, the authors only recruited inmates. Many of the earlier studies used non-incarcerated individuals as a control group, which is far from ideal. “They are not sufficient to discriminate homicide from other violent outcomes or from other psychiatric disorders.”
These researchers have found changes in similar brain regions, but they face the same issues.
Other, later studies have investigated the brains of violent individuals with conditions such as schizophrenia. These include parts of the prefrontal cortex - which is a region that is important for moderating social behavior, among many other things - and the amygdala, which plays a vital role in processing emotions.Īlthough the findings were interesting, the researchers had exclusively enrolled participants who had been found “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Therefore, any of the differences that the scientists measured could have been due to mental illness or brain injury, rather than homicidal tendencies. Earlier studies using PET scans, carried out in the 1990s, concluded that the brains of people convicted of homicide demonstrated reduced activity in a number of brain regions.
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