Neural

• neural explanation

  Suggests that criminals have differences in their pre frontal cortex
• role of Adrian Raine

  conducted studies of brains of people with antisocial personality disorder and found that they have reduced activity in the pre-frontal cortex
• pre frontal cortex

  regulates emotional behaviour
• Raine, Buchsbaum & LaCasse

  used PET scans to investigate whether there are brain abnormalities in murderers who plead NGRI

  • found that there was more activity in the occipital lobe but less in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala
• Raine et al (2000)

  self selected sample of 21 antisocial personality disorder patients against controls using an MRI

  APD patients had less grey matter in the pre frontal cortex than the control group
• mirror neurons

  neurons in the brain that fire when we are performing a task and when we watch someone else perform a task
• Rizzolatti et al (1996)

  Discovered mirror neurons when scanning the brains of monkeys, which explain why we ‘read’ other people’s emotions and feel empathy
• Keysers (2011)

  investigated the activity of mirror neurons in criminals

  • found that mirror neurons did activate but on a much reduced level