Raine

• What was the aim (Raine)?

  To see if violent offenders who commit murder and plead not guilty for reasons of insanity (NGRI) have localised brain dysfunction in the pre-frontal cortex, the amygdala, the thalamus or hippocampus
• What was the sample (Raine)?

  Experimental: 41 Murderers who plead NGRI

  • Not receiving any medication for 2 weeks before the brain scan

  Control: 41 normal individuals

  • matched on sex, age and psychiatric condition
• What was the method(Raine)?

  Quasi- experiment

  Matched pairs design (age, sex and psychiatric condition)
• What was the procedure(Raine)?

  Ppnts were injected with an FDG tracer and asked to complete a continuous performance task

  The task was where ppnts search for targets on a screen and press a button when the target is spotted- This was designed to activate the frontal lobes, right temporal and parietal lobes

  After 32 mins of the task each ppnt was transferred to the PET scanner and their brian was scanned 10 times
• What were the results (Raine)?

  No difference in the performance of the task

  There was reduced activity in murderer's pre-frontal cortex, left angular gyrus and corpus callosum

  There were abnormal asymmetries in murderers: There was reduced activity on the left and greater activity on the right (amygdala, thalamus and hippocampus)
• What were the conclusions(Raine)?

  Suggests that reduced brain activity in some areas may be a predisposition towards violence (The areas with abnormal activity are associated with lack of fear, lower self-control, increased agression etc)

  HOWEVER, although the study suggests that violence has a biological cause, Raine did not conclude that there were only biological causes for violence, just that there may be a predisposition to violence which depends on environmental triggers