neural

• Evidence suggests may be neural differences in brains of offenders and non offenders - much of evidence in this area has invloved individuals diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, APD is associated with reduced emotional responses a lack of empathy for feelings of others and is a condition that characterises many convicted offenders
• Prefrontal cortex


  Raine conducted many studies of APD brain reporting there are several dozen brain imaging studies demonstrating individuals with antisocial personalities have reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex - part of the brain that regualtes emotional behaviour alonsgdie this raine and his colleages found 11% reduction in volume of grey matter in prefrontal cortex of people with APD compared to controls
• mirror neurons 


  recent research suggests offenders with APD can experience empathy but more sporadically than rest of us

  Keysers found only when offenders asked to empathise did their rempathy reaction (controlled by mirror neurons in the brain) activate - suggests APD individuals are not totally without empathy but may have a neural 'switch' that can be turned on and off unlike normal brian which has empathy switch permanently on