Homo ferox: The contribution of functional brain studies to understanding the neural bases of aggressive and criminal behavior

International Journal of Law and Psychiatry

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 259-265

  Pietrini, Pietro ^a   Bambini, Valentina ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PISA   (Italy)

^b SCUOLA NORMALE SUPERIORE   (Italy)

Author keywords

Aggression; Brain lesions; Criminality; fMRI; Forensic evaluation; Free will; Free won't; Frontal cortex; Imputability; Inhibition; PET; Violence

Indexed keywords

AGGRESSION; ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR; ARTICLE; BEHAVIOR CONTROL; BRAIN DAMAGE; BRAIN FUNCTION; BRAIN METABOLISM; CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR; ETHICS; FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY; FRONTAL CORTEX; FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; HUMAN; IMPULSIVENESS; INHIBITION (PSYCHOLOGY); LAW; LIMBIC SYSTEM; NERVE CELL NETWORK; NEUROBIOLOGY; NEUROIMAGING; NEUROSCIENCE; POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY; RESPONSIBILITY; THINKING; VIOLENCE;

AGGRESSION; BRAIN; CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY; FEMALE; HUMANS; MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; MALE; NEUROSCIENCES; PERSONAL AUTONOMY;

EID: 67651039372     PISSN: 01602527     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2009.04.005     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders-IV-TR. Washington, D.C (2000)
2. Babiloni C., Del Percio C., Rossini P.M., Marzano N., Iacoboni M., Infarinato F., et al. Judgment of action in experts: A high-resolution EEG study in elite athletes. NeuroImage 45 (2009) 512-521
3. Birbaumer N., Veit R., Lotze M., Herrmann C., Erb M., Grodd W., et al. Deficient fear conditioning in psychopath: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Archives of General Psychiatry 62 (2005) 799-805
4. Blair R.J.R., Morris J.S., Frith C.D., Perett D.I., and Dolan R.J. Dissociable neural responses to facial expressions of sadness and anger. Brain 122 (1999) 883-893
5. Brower M.C., and Price B.H. Neuropsychiatry of frontal lobe dysfunction in violent and criminal behaviour: A critical review. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 71 (2001) 720-726
6. Bufkin J.L., and Luttrell V.R. Neuroimaging studies of aggressive and violent behavior: Current findings and implications for criminology and criminal justice. Trauma Violence Abuse 6 (2005) 176-191
7. Busey T.A., and Loftus G.R. Cognitive science and the law. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11 (2007) 111-117
8. Butter C.M., Snyder D.R., and McDonald J.A. Effects of orbital frontal lesions on aversive and aggressive behaviors in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Comparative & Physiological Psychology 72 (1970) 132-144
9. Cappa S.F. Brain imaging: Useful, helpful, beneficial?. Cortex 42 (2006) 396-398
10. Casarotto S., Bianchi A.M., Ricciardi E., Gentili C., Vanello N., Guazzelli M., et al. Spatiotemporal dynamics of single-letter reading: A combined ERP-FMRI study. Archives Italiennes de Biologie 146 (2008) 83-105
11. Caspi A., and Moffitt T.E. Gene-environment interactions in psychiatry: Joining forces with neuroscience. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience 7 (2006) 583-590
12. Craig I.W. The importance of stress and genetic variation in human aggression. BioEssays 29 (2007) 227-236
13. Colantonio A., Stamenova V., Abramowitz C., Clarke D., and Christensen B. Brain injury in a forensic psychiatry population. Brain Injury 13-14 (2007) 1353-1360
14. Damasio H., Grabowski T., Frank R., Galaburda A., and Damasio A. The return of Phineas Gage: Clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient. Science 264 (1994) 1102-1105
15. Davidson R.J. Well-being and affective style: Neural substrates and biobehavioural correlates. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 359 (2004) 1395-1411
16. Davidson R.J., Putnam K.M., and Larson C.L. Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation - A possible prelude to violence. Science 289 (2000) 591-594
17. Di Russo F., Pitzalis S., Aprile T., and Spinelli D. Effect of practice on brain activity: An investigation in top-rifle shooters. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 37 (2005) 1586-1593
18. Dougherty D.D., Shin L.M., Alpert N.M., Pitman R.K., Orr S.P., Lasko M., et al. Anger in healthy men: A PET study using script-driven imagery. Biological Psychiatry 46 (1999) 466-472
19. Elliott F.A. Neurology of aggression and episodic dyscontrol. Seminars in Neurology 10 (1990) 303-312
20. Freo U., Ricciardi E., Pietrini P., Schapiro M.B., Rapoport S.I., and Furey M.L. Pharmacological modulation of prefrontal cortical activity during a working memory task in young and older humans: A PET study with physostigmine. The American Journal of Psychiatry 162 (2005) 2061-2070
21. Fuster J.M. The prefrontal cortex: Anatomy, physiology and neuropsychology of the frontal lobe (1989), Raven Press, New York
22. Garland B. Neuroscience and the law: Brain, mind, and the scales of justice (2004), Dana Press, New York
23. Gazzaniga M.S. The ethical brain (2005), Dana Press, New York
24. Grafman J., Schwab K., Warden D., Pridgen A., Brown H.R., and Salazar A.M. Frontal lobe injuries, violence, and aggression: A report of the Vietnam Head Injury Study. Neurology 46 (1996) 1231-1238
25. Gray J.R., Chabris C.F., and Braver T.S. Neural mechanisms of general fluid intelligence. Nature Neuroscience 6 (2003) 316-322
26. Greene J., and Cohen J.D. For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 359 (2004) 1775-1785
27. Harlow J. Passage of an iron bar through the head. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 13 (1848) 389-393
28. Haxby J.V., Hoffman E.A., and Gobbini M.I. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (2000) 223-233
29. Jones D. Human behaviour: Killer instincts. Nature 451 (2008) 512-515
30. Ledoux J.E. The emotional brain (1996), Simon & Schuster, New York
31. Lewis D.O., Pincus J.H., Bard B., Richardson E., Prichep L.S., Feldman M., et al. Neuropsychiatric, psychoeducational, and family characteristics of 14 juveniles condemned to death in the United States. The American Journal of Psychiatry 145 (1988) 584-589
32. Lewis D.O., Pincus J.H., Feldman M., Jackson L., and Bard B. Psychiatric, neurological, and psychoeducational characteristics of 15 death row inmates in the United States. The American Journal of Psychiatry 143 (1986) 838-845
33. Libet B. Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 8 (1985) 529-566
34. Mesulam M.M. Frontal cortex and behavior. Annals of Neurology 19 (1986) 320-325
35. Mobbs D., Lau H.C., Jones O.D., and Frith C.D. Law, responsibility and the brain. Plos Biology 5 (2007) 693-700
36. Mosso A. Concerning the circulation of the blood in the human brain (1881), Verlag Von Viet and Company, Leipzig
37. Newman S.D., Carpenter P.A., Varma S., and Just M.A. Frontal and parietal participation in problem solving in the Tower of London: fMRI and computational modeling of planning and high-level perception. Neuropsychologia 41 (2003) 1668-1682
38. Pietrini P. Toward a biochemistry of mind?. The American Journal of Psychiatry 160 (2003) 1907-1908
39. Pietrini P., Alexander G.E., Furey M.L., Hampel H., and Guazzelli M. The neurometabolic landscape of cognitive decline: In vivo studies with positron emission tomography in Alzheimer's disease. International Journal of Psychophysiology 37 (2000) 87-98
40. Pietrini P., Guazzelli M., Basso G., Jaffe K., and Grafman J. Neural correlates of imaginal aggressive behavior assessed by positron emission tomography in healthy subjects. The American Journal of Psychiatry 157 (2000) 1772-1781
41. Pietrini P., Guazzelli M., and Grafman J. Gender differences in brain activation during aggressive imageries. International Journal of Psychophysiology 30 (1998) 33
42. Raine A., Buchsbaum M., and Lacasse L. Brain abnormalities in murderers indicated by positron emission tomography. Biological Psychiatry 42 (1997) 495-508
43. Raine A., Buchsbaum M.S., Stanley J., Lottenberg S., Abel L., and Stoddard J. Selective reductions in prefrontal glucose metabolism in murderers. Biological Psychiatry 36 (1994) 365-373
44. Raine A., Lencz T., Bihrle S., Lacasse L., and Colletti P. Reduced prefrontal gray matter volume and reduced autonomic activity in antisocial personality disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry 57 (2000) 119-127
45. Raine A., Reid Meloy J., Bihrle S., Stoddard J., and LaCasse L. Reduced prefrontal and increased subcortical brain functioning assessed using positron emission tomography in predatory and affective murderers. Behavioral Science & the Law 16 (1998) 319-332
46. Raine A., Stoddard J., Bihrle S., and Buchsbaum M. Prefrontal glucose deficits in murderers lacking psychosocial deprivation. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology 11 (1998) 1-7
47. Raine A., and Yang Y. Neural foundations to moral reasoning and antisocial behavior. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 1 (2006) 203-213
48. Roskies A. Neuroscientific challenges to free will and responsibility. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10 (2006) 419-423
49. Sani L., Ricciardi E., Papasogli A., Ceccarelli R., Franzoni F., Santoro G., et al. Expertise leads to a more efficient brain utilization: An fMRI study in professional and naive car drivers during attention and visual-spatial tasks. NeuroImage 41 Supplement 1 (2008) (14° Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, June 15-19, 2008, Melbourne, Australia), cd-rom
50. Singer P. Rethinking life and death: The collapse of our traditional ethics (1994), Text Publishing, Melbourne [Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1995)]
51. Small G.W., Bookheimer S.Y., Thompson P.M., Cole G.M., Huang S.C., Kepe V., et al. Current and future uses of neuroimaging for cognitively impaired patients. Lancet Neurology 7 (2008) 161-172
52. Toga A.W., and Mazziotta J.C. Brain mapping. The methods (1996), Academic, San Diego, CA
53. Walker P.L. Wife beating, boxing, and broken noses: Skeletal evidence for the cultural patterning of interpersonal Violence. In: Martin D., and Frayer D. (Eds). Troubled times: Violence and warfare in the past (1997), Gordon and Breach, London 145-175
54. Weiss E.M., Kohler C.G., Nolan K.A., Czobor P., Volavka J., Platt M.M., et al. The relationship between history of violent and criminal behavior and recognition of facial expression of emotions in men with schizophrenia and socioaffective disorder. Aggressive Behavior 32 (2006) 1-8
55. In: Zeki S., and Goodenought O. (Eds). Law and brain. (2006), Oxford University Press, Oxford