neural explanations

• Evidence suggests there are neural differences in the brains of offenders and non-offenders. Much of this evidence has involved individuals with APD- antisocial personality disorder.
• APD is associated with reduced emotional responses, a lack of empathy and is a characteristic found in many offenders.
• Raine reported that there are several dozen brain-imaging studies demonstrating that individuals with APD have reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that regulates emotional behaviour).
• Raine also found an 11% decrease in the volume of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex of people with APD compared to controls.
• Recent research suggests people with APD can experience empathy but they experience it more sporadically.
• Keyser's found that only when offenders were asked to empathise did their empathy reaction (controlled by mirror neurons) activate. This suggests APD individuals are not totally without empathy but may have a neural 'switch' that can be turned on and off.
• Kandel and Freed reviewed evidence of frontal lobe damage and antisocial behaviour. People with such damage tended to show impulsive behaviour, emotional instability and an inability to learn from their mistakes. This supports the idea that brain damage may be a causal factor in offending behaviour.
• However, other factors may contribute to APD, and ultimately to offending. This suggests the link between neural differences and APD may be complex.
• Farrington et al. studied a group of men who scored high on APD. These individuals had experienced various risk factors during childhood (being neglected, raised by a convicted parent). It could be that these earl experiences caused APD and some of the neural differences associated with it. This suggests the relationship between neural differences, APD and offending is complex and there may be other intervening variables that have an impact.