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Penn Medicine released the following announcement on July 2.
Boosting the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for controlling complex ideas and behaviors, may reduce the intention of committing a violent act by more than 50%, according to a research published in the Journal of Neuroscience from 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 sexual aggression were morally wrong.
"The Ability to Handle Such Complex and Fundamental Aspects of Cognition and Behavior The body has enormous social, ethical and perhaps some day legal implications," Roy Hamilton Associate Professor of Neurology at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and Senior Author of Papers
.A Public Health Perspective, "adds Psychologist Adrian Raine a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor and co-author of "Historically, we have not adopted this type of intervention approach around violence," he says. "But that's promising. We only did a 20 minute session and we saw an effect. What if we had more sessions? What if we did it three times a week for a month? "
To draw these conclusions, the research team conducted a double-blind randomized control trial of 81 healthy adults aged 18 or older." At the beginning of the study, participants were assigned randomly 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 assignment, nor the individual who conducted each experiment.
The researchers targeted the prefrontal cortex – and more specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, in the upper and anterior part of the brain – because that he is well … explained that antisocial individuals have deficits in this region, says Olivia Choy, assistant professor of psychology at NTU in Singapore and senior author on paper.
"If the brain of # 3 9, a delinquent is scanned, we do not really know if it's the "said Choy, who earned his Ph.D., 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 sexual 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 sexual assaults 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 assumptions 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 reduce violence.
"The understanding of the causes of crime has focused on social causation. That's important, but research on brain imaging and genetics has also shown that half of the variance in violence can be attributed to biological factors, "says Raine. "We are trying to find benign biological interventions that society will accept, and transcranial direct-current stimulation is a minimal risk.It is not a frontal lobotomy.In fact, we say the opposite, that the anterior part of the brain must be better connected to the rest of the brain. "
Despite the encouraging results, Choy makes it clear that there is more work needed before being certain The type of treatment will reduce the violence. The study must be reproduced and then developed, she says.
A new Hamilton-led research with Sichun Ling, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, focuses on direct current high-intensity transcranial stimulation, 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 happens when such stimulation is administered over longer periods, as well as about 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 anything yet.
Hamilton concludes, "The secret to having less violence in your heart is to have a properly stimulated mind."
Original source can be found here.
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