brain and agression

• what happened to phineas Gage?

  phineas Gage had a Iron rod go through his brain
• what happened to phineas gage behaviour?

  he became unfriendly and moody compared to how he was before
• which lobe was damaged for phineas gage

  His frontal Lobe
• Aggression


  Any action that is aimed at causing either physical and/or psychological pain to oneself to others or to objects in the environment
• Ways aggression can be expressed

  • Verbally
  • Mentally
  • Physically
• Frontal lobe


  • Responsible for decision making, planning, ability to delay gratification and impulsivity
  • Connected to the amygdala and hypothalamus
  • Damage can lead to problems with anger management and impulse control
• Raine et al found that NGRI's (Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity) had less activity in the frontal lobe compared to controls (difference of -0.04)
• Parietal lobe


  • Responsible for language, muscle movement and visuospatial processing
• Occipital lobe


  • Responsible for processing vision
• Temporal lobe


  • Responsible for memory functions, language and emotion
  • Includes the hippocampus which is involved in the creation of long-term memory
• The prefrontal cortex is in charge of decision making and impulse control
• If the prefrontal cortex is damaged, an individual may act on impulse and does not think about the consequences of their aggressive behaviour
• Hypothalamus


  • Regulates blood pressure, breathing and arousal (fight or flight)
  • Regulates hormones which control hunger and thirst, including testosterone
• High levels of testosterone

  May cause an individual to interpret more behaviours as threatening, leading to more aggressive behaviour
• Amygdala


  • Takes information from the thalamus and interprets it to produce an emotional response, such as an aggressive reaction to a threat
  • If the amygdala malfunctions this affects how it interpret situations
• The amygdala is connected to the prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in deciding whether or not to behave aggressively
• Thalamus


  • Acts as a switchboard, redirects incoming messages from the body to relevant areas of the brain
  • Directs information about facial expressions and body language from the eyes to the amygdala so it can interpret whether there is a threat or not
• Hippocampus


  • Takes short term memories and converts them into long-term memories so helps us to learn
  • Abnormal activity could prevent individuals learning from the consequences of their aggressive actions, so they repeat aggressive behaviour