The Anatomy of Violence

by Adrian Raine

  54. Tuvblad, C., Grann, M. & Lichtenstein, P. (2006). Heritability for adolescent antisocial behavior differs with socioeconomic status: Gene-environment interaction. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47, 734–43. In this study, the negative home environment was defined on the basis of socioeconomic status. Furthermore, this moderating effect was particularly found for boys.

  55. The genotype in question consisted of those with the A1 allelic form of the DRD2 gene.

  56. Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D. & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science 275, 1293–94.

  57. Baker, L. A., Barton, M. & Raine, A. (2002). The Southern California Twin Register at the University of Southern California. Twin Research 5, 456–59.

  58. Gao, Y., Baker, L. A., Raine, A., Wu, H. & Bezdjian, S. (2009). Brief Report: Interaction between social class and risky decision-making in children with psychopathic tendencies. Journal of Adolescence 32, 409–14.

  59. Delamater, A. R. (2007). The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in sensory-specific encoding of associations in Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1121, 152–73.

  60. In outlining how different brain structures may give rise to the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral risk factors for violence, I have been relatively simplistic. Limbic abnormalities may, for example, in part give rise to the more affective, emotional components of violence, but clearly there will be interactions between multiple brain circuits—including the orbitofrontal cortex—giving rise to any one risk factor for violence.

  61. Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Buckholtz, J. W., Kolachana, B., Hariri, A. R., Pezawas, L., et al. (2006). Neural mechanisms of genetic risk for impulsivity and violence in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, 6269–74.

  62. Huang, E. J. & Reichardt, L. F. (2001). Neurotrophins: Roles in neural development and function. Annual Review of Neuroscience 24, 677–736.

  63. Gorski, J. A., Zeiler, S. R., Tamowski, S. & Jones, K. R. (2003). Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is required for the maintenance of cortical dendrites. Journal of Neuroscience 23, 6856–65.

  64. Bueller, J. A., Aftab, M., Sen, S., Gomez-Hassan, D., Burmeister, M., et al. (2006). BDNF val(66)met allele is associated with reduced hippocampal volume in healthy subjects. Biological Psychiatry 59, 812–15.

  65. Goldberg, T. E. & Weinberger, D. R. (2004). Genes and the parsing of cognitive processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, 325–35.

  66. Soliman, F., Glatt, C. E., Bath, K. G., Levita, L., Jones, R. M., et al. (2010). A genetic variant BDNF polymorphism alters extinction learning in both mouse and human. Science 327, 863–66.

  67. Oades, R. D., Lasky-Su, J., Christiansen, H., Faraone, S. V., Sonuga-Barke, E. J., et al. (2008). The influence of serotonin and other genes on impulsive behavioral aggression and cognitive impulsivity in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Findings from a family-based association test (FBAT) analysis. Behavioral and Brain Functions 4, 48.

  68. Einat, H., Manji, H. K., Gould, T. D., Du, J. & Chen, G. (2003). Possible involvement of the ERK signaling cascade in bipolar disorder: Behavioral leads from the study of mutant mice. Drug News & Perspectives 16, 453–63.

  69. Earls, F. J., Brooks-Gunn, J., Raudenbush, S. W. & Sampson, R. J. (2002). Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN): Longitudinal Cohort Study, Waves 1–3, 1994–2002. Computer file. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (distributor).

  70. Sharkey, P. (2010). The acute effect of local homicides on children’s cognitive performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107 (11) 733–38.

  71. Meyer, G. J. et al. (2001). Psychological testing and psychological assessment: A review of evidence and issues. American Psychologist 56, 128–65.

  72. Ibid.

  73. Sharkey, The acute effect of local homicides on children’s cognitive performance.

  74. Oitzl, M. S., Champagne, D. L., van der Veen, R. & de Kloet, E. R. (2010). Brain development under stress: Hypotheses of glucocorticoid actions revisited. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 34, 853–66.

  75. Sharkey, The acute effect of local homicides on children’s cognitive performance.

  76. McNulty, T. L. & Bellair, P. E. (2003). Explaining racial and ethnic differences in adolescent violence: Structural disadvantage, family well-being, and social capital. Justice Quarterly 20, 1–31.

  77. Moffitt, T. E. & Silva, P. A. (1987). WISC-R verbal and performance IQ discrepancy in an unselected cohort: Clinical significance and longitudinal stability. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology 55, 768–74.

  78. Rowe, D. C. (2002). IQ, birth weight, and number of sexual partners in white, African American, and mixed race adolescents. Population and Environment 23, 513–24.

  79. Centers for Disease Control (2007). Youth Violence: National Statistics. http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/youthviolence/stats_at-a_glance/hr_age-race.html.

  80. Sampson, R. J., Sharkey, P. & Raudenbush, S. W. (2008). Durable effects of concentrated disadvantage on verbal ability among African-American children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, 845–52.

  81. Winship, C. & Korenman, S. (1997). In B. Devlin, S. E. Fienberg, D. P. Resnick & K. Roeder (eds.), Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to the Bell Curve, pp. 215–34. New York: Springer.

  82. Pat Sharkey and Rob Sampson’s work on ethnicity, violence, neighborhoods, and verbal ability has been confined to African-Americans and Hispanics because exposure to homicide was rare among Caucasians in their sample. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the same negative effects on cognitive ability—and, by proxy, brain functioning—could equally apply to Caucasians.

  83. Kellerman, J. (1977). Behavioral treatment of a boy with 47, XYY Karyotype. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 165, 67–71.

  84. Each cell in the body has about five feet of DNA, but once it is spooled around the histone proteins it is tiny, less than 100 micrometers. Redon, C., Pilch, D., Rogakou, E., Sedelnikova, O., Newrock, K., et al. (2002). Histone H2A variants H2AX and H2AZ. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 12, 162–69.

  85. Liu, D., Diorio, J., Tannenbaum, B., Caldji, C., Francis, D., et al. (1997). Maternal care, hippocampal glucocorticoid receptors, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal responses to stress. Science 277, 1659–62.

  86. Weaver, I.C.G., Meaney, M. J. & Szyf, M. (2006). Maternal care effects on the hippocampal transcriptome and anxiety-mediated behaviors in the offspring that are reversible in adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, 3480–85.

  87. Murgatroyd, C., Patchev, A. V., Wu, Y., Micale, V., Bockmühl, Y., et al. (2009). Dynamic DNA methylation programs persistent adverse effects of early-life stress. Nature Neuroscience 12, 1559–68.

  88. Mill, J. & Petronis, A. (2008). Pre- and peri-natal environmental risks for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): The potential role of epigenetic processes in mediating susceptibility. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 49, 1020–30.

  89. Tremblay, R. E. (2010). Developmental origins of disruptive behaviour problems: The “original sin” hypothesis, epigenetics and their consequences for prevention. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 51, 341–67.

  90. Champagne, F. A. (2010). Epigenetic influence of social experiences across the lifespan. Developmental Psychobiology 52, 299–311.

  91. Zambrano, E., Martinez-Samayoa, P. M., Bautista, C. J., Deas, M., Guillen, L., et al. (2005). Sex differences in transgenerational alterations of growth and metabolism in progeny (F2) of female offspring (F1) of rats fed a low protein diet during pregnancy and lactation. Journal of Physiology 566, 225–36.

  92. Chugani, H. T., Behen, M. E., Muzik, O., Juhasz, C., Nagy, F., et al. (2001). Local brain
functional activity following early deprivation: A study of postinstitutionalized Romanian orphans. NeuroImage 14, 1290–1301.

  93. Eluvathingal, T. J., Chugani, H. T., Behen, M. E., Juhasz, C., Muzik, O., et al. (2006). Abnormal brain connectivity in children after early severe socioemotional deprivation: A diffusion tensor imaging study. Pediatrics 117, 2093–2100.

  94. Oitzl, M. S., Champagne, D. L., van der Veen, R. & de Kloet, E. R. (2010). Brain development under stress: Hypotheses of glucocorticoid actions revisited. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 34, 853–66.

  95. Andersen, S. L., Tomada, A., Vincow, E. S., Valente, E., Polcari, A., et al. (2008). Preliminary evidence for sensitive periods in the effect of childhood sexual abuse on regional brain development. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 20, 292–301.

  96. Kaldy, Z. & Sigala, N. (2004). The neural mechanisms of object working memory: What is where in the infant brain? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 28, 113–21.

  97. Alexander, G. E. & Goldman, P. S. (1978). Functional development of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: An analysis utilizing reversible cryogenic depression. Brain Research 14, 233–49.

  98. Ganzel, B. L. et al. (2008). Resilience after 9/11: Multimodal neuroimaging evidence for stress-related change in the healthy adult brain. NeuroImage 40, 788–95.

  99. Blair, R.J.R. (2007). The amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in morality and psychopathy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, 387–92.

  100. Raine, A. & Yang, Y. (2006). The neuroanatomical bases of psychopathy: A review of brain imaging findings. In C. J. Patrick (ed.), Handbook of Psychopathy, pp. 278–95. New York: Guilford; Raine, A. & Yang, Y. (2006). Neural foundations to moral reasoning and antisocial behavior. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience 1, 203–13.

  101. Blair, R.J.R. (2008). The amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex: Functional contributions and dysfunction in psychopathy. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363, 2557–65; Davidson, R. J., Putnam, K. M. & Larson, C. L. (2000). Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation—a possible prelude to violence. Science 289, 591–94; Kiehl, K. A. (2006). A cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychopathy: Evidence for paralimbic system dysfunction. Psychiatry Research 142, 107–28; Raine & Yang, The neuroanatomical bases of psychopathy; Raine & Yang, Neural foundations to moral reasoning and antisocial behavior.

  102. The angular gyrus fundamentally has a cognitive role, but as with other brain regions it is multifunctional. The functional neuroanatomical model of violence is heuristic, illustrating the complexity of brain-behavior relationships.

  103. Freedman, M. et al. (1998). Orbitofrontal function, object alternation and perseveration. Cerebral Cortex 8, 18–27.

  104. Ochsner, K. N. et al. (2002). Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14, 1215–29.

  105. Bechara, A. (2004). The role of emotion in decision-making: Evidence from neurological patients with orbitofrontal damage. Brain and Cognition 55, 30–40.

  106. Gusnard, D. A. et al. (2001). Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential mental activity: Relation to a default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 98, 4259–64.

  107. Rolls, E. T. (2000). The orbitofrontal cortex and reward. Cerebral Cortex 10, 284–94.

  108. Dolan, M. & Park, I. (2002). The neuropsychology of antisocial personality disorder. Psychological Medicine 32, 417–27.

  109. Larden, M. et al. (2006). Moral judgment, cognitive distortions and empathy in incarcerated delinquent and community control adolescents. Psychology, Crime & Law 12, 453–62.

  110. Dinn, W. M. & Harris, C. L. (2000). Neurocognitive function in antisocial personality disorder. Psychiatry Research 97, 173–90.

  111. Blair, K. S. et al. (2006). Impaired decision-making on the basis of both reward and punishment information in individuals with psychopathy. Personality & Individual Differences 41, 155–65.

  112. Davidson, R. J. et al. (2000). Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation—a possible prelude to violence. Science 289, 591–94.

  113. Dodge, K. A. & Frame, C. L. (1982). Social cognitive biases and deficits in aggressive boys. Child Development 53, 620–35.

  114. Moll, J. et al. (2005). The moral affiliations of disgust: A functional MRI study. Cognitive Behavioral Neurology 18, 68–78.

  115. Jarrard, L. E. (1993). On the role of the hippocampus in learning and memory in the rat. Behavioral Neural Biology 60, 9–26.

  116. Greene, J. D. et al. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science 293, 2105–8.

  117. Takahashi, H. et al. (2004). Brain activation associated with evaluative processes of guilt and embarrassment: An fMRI study. NeuroImage 23, 967–74.

  118. Decety, J. & Jackson, P. L. (2006). A social-neuroscience perspective on empathy. Current Directions in Psychological Science 15, 54–58.

  119. LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience 23, 155–84.

  120. Ochsner, K. N. et al. (2005). The neural correlates of direct and reflected self-knowledge. NeuroImage 28, 797–814.

  121. Moll, J. et al. (2002). The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions. The Journal of Neuroscience 22, 2730–36.

  122. Kosson, D. S. et al. (2002). Facial affect recognition in criminal psychopaths. Emotion 2, 398–411.

  123. Jolliffe, D. & Farrington, D. P. (2004). Empathy and offending: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Aggression and Violent Behavior 9, 441–76.

  124. Birbaumer, N. et al. (2005). Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Archives of General Psychiatry 62, 799–805.

  125. Keltner, D. et al. (1995). Facial expressions of emotion and psychopathology in adolescent boys. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 104, 644–52.

  126. Lombardi, W. J. et al. (1999). Wisconsin card sorting test performance following head injury: Dorsolateral fronto-striatal circuit activity predicts perseveration. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 21, 2–16.

  127. Tekin, S. & Cummings, J. L. (2002). Frontal-subcortical neuronal circuits and clinical neuropsychiatry: An update. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 532, 647–54.

  128. Antonucci, A. S. et al. (2006). Orbitofrontal correlates of aggression and impulsivity in psychiatric patients. Psychiatry Research 147, 213–20.

  129. Dias, R. et al. (1996). Dissociation in prefrontal cortex of affective and attentional shifts. Nature 380, 69–72.

  130. Makris, N., Biedferman, J., Velera, E. M., et al. (2007). Cortical thinning of the attention and executive function networks in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Cerebral Cortex 17, 1364–75.

  131. Dolan, M. & Park, I. (2002). The neuropsychology of antisocial personality disorder. Psychological Medicine 32, 417–27.

  132. Seguin, J. R. et al. (2002). Response perseveration in adolescent boys with stable and unstable histories of physical aggression: The role of underlying processes. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry 43, 481–94.

  133. Völlm, B. et al. (2004). Neurobiological substrates of antisocial and borderline personality disorders: Preliminary result of a functional MRI study. Criminal Behavior and Mental Health 14, 39–54.

  134. Simonoff, E. et al. (2004). Predictors of antisocial personality: Continuities from childhood to adult life. British Journal of Psychiatry 184, 118–27.

  135. Raine, A., Lee, L., Yang, Y. & Colletti, P. (2010). Neurodevelopmental marker for limbic maldevelopment in antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy. British Journal of Psychiatry 197, 186–92.

  136. George, D. T., Rawlings, R. R., Williams, W. A., Phillips, M. J., Fong, G., et al. (2004). A select group of perpetrators of domestic violence: Evidence of decreased
metabolism in the right hypothalamus and reduced relationships between cortical/subcortical brain structures in position emission tomography. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 130, 11–25.

  137. Glenn, A. L., Raine, A., Yaralian, P. S. & Yang, Y. L. (2010). Increased volume of the striatum in psychopathic individuals. Biological Psychiatry 67, 52–58.

  138. Widom, C. S. (1989). Child-abuse, neglect, and adult behavior: Research design and findings on criminality, violence, and child-abuse. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 59, 355–67.

  139. Fox, A. L. & Levine, B. (2005). Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

  140. Norris, Serial Killers.

  141. Ibid.

  142. Lucas was released after serving only ten years of his twenty-year sentence, apparently due to prison overcrowding.

  143. Norris, Serial Killers.

  144. Hare, R. D. (1999). Without Conscience. New York: Guilford Press.

  145. Norris, Serial Killers, p. 109.

  146. ABC News. (2001). Henry Lee Lucas Dies in Prison. http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93864&page=1#.T2aIWBGmi8A.

  9. CURING CRIME

  1. Moir, A. (1996). A Mind to Crime: The Dangerous Few. TV documentary.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Raine, A., Venables, P. H. & Williams, M. (1990). Relationships between central and autonomic measures of arousal at age 15 years and criminality at age 24 years. Archives of General Psychiatry 47, 1003–7.

  4. Bouchard, T. J. (2004). Genetic influence on human psychological traits: A survey. Current Directions in Psychological Science 13, 148–51.

  5. Räsänen, P., Hakko, H., Isohanni, M., Hodgins, S., Järvelin, M. R., et al. (1999). Maternal smoking during pregnancy and risk of criminal behavior among adult male offspring in the northern Finland 1966 birth cohort. American Journal of Psychiatry 156, 857–62.

  6. Liu, J., Raine, A., Wuerker, A., Venables, P. H. & Mednick, S. (2009). The association of birth complications and externalizing behavior in early adolescents: Direct and mediating effects. Journal of Research on Adolescence 19, 93–111.