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According to a new study published Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience, the ability to use brain stimulation to help prevent future violence has just passed a proof-of-concept stage.
In a double-blind randomized controlled trial, a group of volunteers who received a load in their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain directly behind the forehead that is responsible for planning, reasoning and inhibition – were less likely to report aggressive behavior compared to a similar group The experience examined the aggressive intent as well as the way people have reasoned about the violence and found that the Moral illicitness about hypothetical aggression was increased in the group receiving transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). This form of brain stimulation provides targeted impulses to the brain through electrodes placed on a person's scalp.
"Zapping offenders with electrical power to repair their brains seems like a fiction, but it may not be as crazy as that. said Adrian Raine, a neurocriminologist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the investigators of the study. "This study goes in the direction of documenting a causal association by showing that the improvement of the prefrontal cortex slows down the impulse to act aggressively."
In the experiment, 39 volunteers received DC stimulation for their prefrontal cortex for 20 minutes. One placebo group received a weak current for 30 seconds. The next day, both groups read two stories, one portraying an act of physical aggression and the other an act of sexual assault. Both groups of volunteers were then asked to rate their likelihood of performing similar acts on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being the least likely and 10 the most likely.
To assess their sense of morality, subjects had to rate a scale from zero (not at all) to 10 (very) how morally reprehensible it would be to act in the same way as the protagonist in the two stories.
For a third task measuring aggression, subjects showed a computer-generated image of a doll and said it represented a close partner or friend. They were then told that they could free themselves from any negative energy towards this person by inserting zero to 51 pins into the doll. The higher the number used, the higher the level of aggression.
The researchers found a 54% reduction in aggressive intentions in the group receiving stimulation and a 31% jump in their feeling of moral wrongness in the act. d & # 39; assault. There was no significant difference between the two groups in the voodoo doll test measuring behavioral aggression.
Olivia Choy, Senior Researcher, Criminologist who teaches at the Department of Psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said: "It is certainly a first step in the development of the world. STCC study and antisocial and aggressive behavior, which could inform future approaches to reduce aggressive intention and behavior through a non-invasive and relatively benign intervention targeting a biological risk factor for crime.
The scientists in the study warn that this is still very early in the game and that further studies need to be completed before an application is deemed possible. 19659011] Roy Hamilton, the third scientist involved in the study and director of the Laboratory of Cognition and Neural Stimulation at the University of According to the Perelman School of Medicine in Pennsylvania, the experiment shows complex influences on a dangerous human trait.
"The study also suggests that violent thinking and action are not entirely predestined by the brain, influenced by external inputs," he said. External input was electrical stimulation, but external circumstances that may influence the brain's machinery to control violence include the whole spectrum of lived experiences. "
Participants included adults 18 years of age and older and female, and ethnically diverse Before participating, all received a series of tests and quizzes measuring the personality, criminality and social adversity of childhood.
Tom Hummer, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Research at the University of Indiana Medical School, said that as an experimental manipulation that a study of early treatment, especially because the doll part of the exp Erience has shown no difference in this laboratory measure of aggressive behavior.
"The biggest limitation is a lack of behavioral effect". "It is difficult to measure the actual aggression in the laboratory, but even in their measurement, they do not find any difference between the groups in real aggression. It is therefore difficult to say if the subjects simply say that they would act differently or if the behavior of the real world would change. "
Delaney Smith welcomes the new study and what it may suggest. Smith is a forensic psychiatrist in Columbus, Ohio, who helps treatment-resistant depressed patients with FDA-approved transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is weaker and less targeted than direct transcranial direct stimulation.
aggressiveness and do not have very good interventions – just talk about therapy, unapproved drugs, "she said. "All we can add to the therapeutic arsenal to counter future acts of violence, the better."
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