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This could be a shocking way of dealing with future criminals. Scientists have discovered that a session of electrical brain stimulation can reduce people's intentions to commit aggression and increase their moral awareness.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore explored the potential for brain stimulation. fight crime after noting that the deficiency in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex has been linked to violent acts.
They recruited 86 healthy adults and gave them 20 minutes of brain stimulation before asking for the entire group of scenarios, one describing a physical assault, the other a sexual assault. Immediately after, participants were asked to rate the likelihood that they could behave as the protagonist had in the stories.
For those who had their brain zapped, the expressed likelihood of performing physical and sexual assaults was 47% and 70% respectively lower than those who did not have brain stimulation. In the first scenario, Chris crushes a bottle on Joe's head to chat with his girlfriend, and in the second, a night of intimate foreplay leads to rape.
The prof. Olivia Choy, psychologist at NTU, says that neuroscientists There is an established link between impaired activity in the prefrontal cortex and antisocial behavior, it was not known if reduced brain activity was a trigger for 39, violent acts. "We wanted to test if there was a causal role for this area of the brain," she says.
Using a procedure called transcranial direct current stimulation, or Chelsea, Choy and colleagues Adrian Raine and Roy Hamilton at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a current of 2 milliAmp to the prefrontal cortex of volunteers to stimulate the Activity of the region.
In the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers describe how brain stimulation reduces people's intentions to commit aggression and makes them more morally opposed to acts. But in the lab at least, the stimulation did not reduce the actual violent acts. Part of the study allowed the volunteers to vent their emotions on voodoo dolls, which ended up being pinned with pins, whether or not they had brain stimulation
Scientists point out that much more work is needed to confirm could help reduce violent crime in the future. But if that proves effective, Raine thinks it could be offered to convicted criminals with other more traditional interventions.
"When most people think about crime, they think bad neighborhoods, poverty, discrimination," says Raine. "But we also believe that there is a biological contribution to crime that has been seriously neglected in the past. This shows that there could be a different new approach to trying to reduce crime and violence in society.
Caroline Di Bernardi Luft, a psychologist who is studying STCC at Queen Mary, University of London, points out that the study It was not conducted on criminals and it will be difficult to prove that the stimulation brain can reduce the real crime.
Brain stimulation could also turn on her, she said. "It gives your brain a little boost, and if it increases what is already happening in your brain, you could make things worse," she said. She added that one of the ways to prevent this could be to stimulate the brain while people perform tasks designed to strengthen their moral conscience.
Scientists now hope to conduct experiments on more people using a more focused brain stimulation procedure. . By stimulating activity in a region of the brain called the ventral prefrontal cortex, they hope to help people control the powerful emotions that lead to impulsive attacks
"If science shows that it can work and change behavior "What is so hateful? Give it as an option with people's consent," Raine said. "I see this coming and we have to prepare for it."
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