Brain Stimulation Can Reduce a Person's Intent to Commit a Violent Act

July 2, 2018

Stimulating the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for controlling complex ideas and behaviors, may reduce a person's intention to commit a violent act of more than 50 percent, according to a study published in Journal of Neuroscience of the University of Pennsylvania and Nanyang Technological University. Moreover, using such a minimally invasive technique, called direct current transcranial stimulation, increased the perception that acts of physical and badual aggression were morally wrong.

"The ability to manipulate such complex and fundamental aspects of cognition and behavior The body has enormous social, ethical and perhaps even legal implications," Roy Hamilton Associate professor of neurology at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and senior paper author.

a public health perspective, "adds psychologist Adrian Raine a professor of Penn Integrates Knowledge and co – author of the article. "Historically, we have not adopted this type of approach to interventions around violence," he says. "But that has a promise: we do not have the same thing. we did a 20-minute session and we saw an effect: if we had more sessions, and if we did it three times a week for a month? "

To draw these conclusions, the L & Research team conducted a double-blind randomized control trial on 81 healthy adults aged 18 or older. At the start of the study, participants were randomly badigned to one of two groups: the first received stimulation on the prefrontal cortex for 20 minutes; the second, the placebo group, received a weak current for 30 seconds, then nothing. Participants did not know their group badignment, nor the individual leading each experiment.

The researchers targeted the prefrontal cortex, and more specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, in the upper, forward part of the brain, because it is according to Olivia Choy, badistant professor of psychology at NTU in Singapore and author main on the document, "if the brain of a delinquent is scanned, we do not really know if it is the brain deficit that leads to the behavior or if it is the reverse", said Choy, who earned his PhD, MA, and BA from Penn. "One of the main goals of this study was to see if there was a causal role of this area of ​​the brain on antisocial behavior."

After the stimulation, the researchers presented participants with two hypothetical scenarios, one on physical and badual aggression, and asked them to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 (with 0 being no chance and 10 being 100 percent) the probability that they would act as the protagonist in the vignettes. For members of the experimental group, stimulation decreased their intention of performing physical and badual badaults of 47 and 70%, respectively. Participants also rated on the same scale from 0 to 10 how morally they felt the scenarios were.

"We chose our approach and behavioral tasks specifically based on our badumptions about areas of the brain that might be relevant to generate aggressive intentions." Hamilton says. "We were happy to see at least some of our major predictions."

In theory, the results mean that simple biological interventions – separately or in conjunction with psychological interventions such as cognitive-behavioral therapy – can potentially [19659003] "Much of the understanding of the causes of crime has focused on social causation, but research on brain imaging and genetics has also shown that half of the variance in violence can be attributed to biological factors. "Raine says," We are trying to find benign biological interventions that society will accept, and transcranial direct current stimulation is a minimal risk, it's not a frontal lobotomy, in fact, we say the opposite, that the anterior part of the brain "

Despite the encouraging results, Choy makes it clear that there is still work to be done before making sure that this type of treatment will reduce the violence. L & # 39; study to be replicated and then developed, she says.

A new Hamilton-led research with Sichun Ling, PhD candidate at the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, focuses on high-intensity transcranial stimulation of Direct current, a higher resolution approach that activates smaller portions of the prefrontal cortex as the frontal pole.The researchers also say that they want to know more about what is going on. such stimulation is given over longer periods, as well as the long-term effects of this type of treatment.

"This is not the magic bullet that will vanish aggression and crime," says Raine. "But can direct transcranial stimulation be proposed as an intervention technique for first-time delinquents, to reduce their likelihood of resuming a violent act?"

Researchers do not exclude everything yet. Hamilton concludes, "The secret to having less violence in your heart is to have a properly stimulated mind."