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In a new study that will not fail to awaken the eyebrows, the researchers performed transcranial direct current stimulation on volunteers (zap their brains) and found a significant reduction in violence. trends. The procedure could be useful for treating patients or criminals with mental illness who exhibit aggressive and antisocial behavior .
The Trigger of Aggression
It makes sense to target specific brain areas in order to obtain or inhibit certain behaviors. Our personalities are quite fragile, as Janet Cromer testifies. Cromer's husband, Alan, had a personality that his wife described as being "stamped with kindness, love, curiosity, and humor." A severe anoxic brain injury as a result of a heart attack and a cardiac arrest reshaped Alan's brain. his personality, turning man into an incredibly morose individual marked by unpredictable fits of anger and confusion. Cromer compared her husband to Jekyll and Hyde.
A 2009 study found that aggression is a common byproduct of brain injury (TBI), with a prevalence of 28.4% in a sample of 67 participants, primarily as verbal aggression. And one can not speak of traumatic brain injury and its potential for personality deformity without mentioning the famous case of Phineas Gage, also known as "the man with a hole in the head".
Gage and his "constant companion" The iron – a day after 1849. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
A worker from the Vermont railways in the United States, Phineas, was responsible for clearing rocks for railroads. For very large rocks, he will dig a hole in the ground, put explosives, and then light a fuse to blow the ruble. In September 13th 1848, this routine procedure took a turn for the worse when an iron rod scraped the side of a rock, igniting a spark that unleashed early gunpowder. The iron bar – a meter long and 3 cm in diameter – plunged into his skull, just under his left eye, landing at about thirty meters.
Phineas has remarkably survived another 12 years, but her life has been changed forever. The man has become unpredictable, often swearing and making inappropriate remarks unexpectedly. Psychiatrists today would classify him as "uninhibited", meaning that he no longer cares about norms in a social and emotional context. For science, however, it was an important moment – the case of Phineas was one of the first to demonstrate that brain damage could affect our behavior and our personality.
For some time modern science has known that the prefrontal cortex is related to the control of aggressive behavior, with damage to that area of the brain being associated with more violent and antisocial behavior. However, it is never clear whether damage to the prefrontal cortex leads to violent behavior or any other reason.
A Reverse Lobotomy
Roy Hamilton (left) is seen here fixing the device that has stimulated the prefrontal cortex of volunteers. The procedure has reduced the intent of someone to commit a violent crime. Credit: Penn Medicine
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore designed an experiment in which they studied what was happening when they stimulated the prefrontal cortex with electrical currents . manipulating such complex and fundamental aspects of cognition and behavior from the outside of the body has enormous social, ethical and perhaps some day legal implications, "said Roy Hamilton, neurologist at Perelman School of Penn Medicine and the main author of paper. 86 healthy adult participants, half of whom received 20 minutes of non-invasive brain stimulation, half of whom received gentle, low intensity stimulation for 30 seconds. It was a randomized, double-blind trial, which meant that neither the participants nor the people conducting the experiment knew to whom to attribute what. Each participant was asked to read two hypothetical scenarios, one on a physical assault (someone striking a drink on the head of a friend to chat with his girlfriend) and the other. another about sexual assault (intimate preliminaries lead to rape). In stimulation sessions, each person was asked the likelihood of seeing themselves as the perpetrator of the violence in these scenarios, on a scale of 0 (completely unlikely) to 10 (extremely likely). They were also asked to rate how morally reprehensible they were
Those in the group who had electrical stimulation were 47% and 70% less likely to report to the violent person represented in both scenarios. as the control group (light stimulation).
In order to pacify or treat extremely violent individuals suffering from various mental illnesses, historically, doctors have always manipulated the brain in one way or another. In the past, for example, frontal lobotomy – an extremely invasive procedure that involves cutting the fibers connected to the frontal lobe – was commonly used.
Now, rather than removing parts of the brain related to potentially aggressive behavior, the team of researchers chose to stimulate them. Counter-intuitively to the old school of thought, violent tendencies have been effectively reduced.
"Historically, we have not adopted this type of approach to interventions around violence. But it'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? ", Said psychologist Adrian Raine, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and co-author of the article
The findings suggest that this simple, non-invasive biological intervention – be separate or in conjunction with traditional psychological interventions such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – could have the potential to reduce violent behavior in general.Before this happens, however, more studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure; the results need to be reproduced and validated with a larger sample size.In addition, the long-term effects of such intervention need to be evaluated.
"This is not the quick fix that will eliminate Aggression and crime, "says Raine." But could transcranial direct-current stimulation be an intervention technique for first-time delinquents to reduce their likelihood of reincarceration? "
" Perhaps, "Hamilton concludes," the secret of less violence in the heart is to have a properly stimulated mind. "
The results appeared in Journal of Neuroscience
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