The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior
Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris
Unlocking crime: the biological key (BBC News, 12/21/2004)
New research is now showing that genetic and biological factors play an equal, if not greater, role than social factors in crime causation.
Within this new field of biocriminology, brain imaging findings are revealing dramatic new insights into the criminal mind.
There are now 71 brain imaging studies showing that murderers, psychopaths, and individuals with aggressive, antisocial personalities have poorer functioning in the prefrontal cortex - that part of the brain involved in regulating and controlling emotion and behaviour.
More dramatically, we now know that the brains of criminals are physically different from non-criminals, showing an 11% reduction in the volume of grey matter (neurons) in the prefrontal cortex.
The claim here is that genetics has a greater amount of effect on these behaviors than experience. They run the numbers slightly different here, but I believe that looking further into this will show that the percentage of influence on these behaviors is not really different than the percentages that are found concerning almost all other traits. The comparison between parental, peer and genetic influences in almost all behaviors and disorders has been explained in recent books such as The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.
It is not mentioned but when they say that there is “an 11% reduction in the volume of grey matter” they are talking about statistically in a population and not that every criminal has 11% reduction. Extremes in the sampling can be important in this way.
It is also well known that a very large percentage of prisoners have various forms of ADD/ADHD. Those with ADD often also have ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) which is usually a diagnosis given because of anti-social or criminal behavior. Notice how the other article on this page mentions change in the same brain region as this article but with no mention of criminal brains and how this article mentions the problems with the same region of the brain but without mentioning ADD. This kind of narrow focus of study often misses patterns in common with other studies of other disorders and misses the big picture of commonalities throughout the diagnostic manuals.
Violent offenders just do not have the emergency brakes to stop their runaway aggressive behaviour.
This is an exaggeration but an important point. People have varying ability in all realms. Violent offenders have the ability to control their behaviors, but they often have less ability to control it. And, as all disorders are caused by forms of stress, increased stress or duress will or can seriously further impair the ability to hinder these various behaviors.
There is exciting new evidence that an abnormality in one specific gene (monoamine oxidase A), when combined with child abuse, predisposes to violent offending in adulthood.
In a similar fashion, birth complications, when combined with maternal rejection in the first year of life, results in higher violence at age 34.
Low physiological arousal (e.g. low sweat and heart rates) is a well-replicated risk factor for crime and violence, but stimulants (drugs which increase arousal) are effective in reducing aggressive and antisocial behaviour in children.
The liberal political slant of this press release, that genetics causes criminal behavior, is contraindicated in the above paragraph that mentions a gene but “along with child abuse” and birth complications “combined with maternal rejection” resulting in higher (statistical!) violence. Both of these examples mention environmental factors so the genetic causation is very much muddied in this argument.
Notice also the mention of stimulants as a treatment but without mentioning that this is the same treatment for ADD. The possible commonality of these people having ADD as the cause of the diffferences in brain is completely avoided. (ADD being the governing factor could interfere with the position that criminal behavior is completely out of the person's control when not every person with ADD is a criminal. This kind of oversight occurs easily of the only population being examined is the criminal population - too narrow a focus of observation for truth-seeking.)
The next decade will reveal new discoveries regarding specific genes that cause violent behaviour, and these findings could result in new drugs to correct the neurotransmitter brain abnormalities that cause violence.
This declaration that specific genes will be discovered that cause violence is not supported by the observations with other genes in history. Rarely is a specific gene associated with anything in the absence of many other factors or many other genes. Rarely is a gene that is identified with one problem not later also identified with another problem. Perhaps these genes increase the likelihood of stress. (I predict that whatever gene is identified here will also be considered to contribute to increased risk of a variety of other disorders when examined for those disorders.)
And, once again, the tag line is that new drugs will be developed to solve all problems.
All of our actions and our choices and experiences change our brains. Extremes of these differences in experience will always create change in the brains as well (to a greater or lesser degree that can be measured).
[Click to Go Back to Unified Theory More Essays Page]
[Click to Go Back to Unified Theory Directory Page]
Many of the problems of medicine, biology, psychology and philosophy require an understanding of the basic mathematical principles behind how the nervous system does what it does to achieve function and experience, and that mathematics is not explained using narrowly-focused statistics. Understanding how this math works will be the tool for the discovery of many answers of great importance to humanity. The case for this concept and the offering of an explanation of this kind of math is made in the many essays of this website.
On these pages you will find ideas that should haunt you. Included are new concepts in science, medicine, sociology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy and more...
This website and the podcasts of Everyone's Revolution explain how the brain creates the mind, but many side issues must be resolved in order to teach this material. Once you realize that the "hard problems" are really the first problems to be answered, you then have a tool for changing all of science and medicine by explaining a massive number of discoveries that will fall into line in order to unify the evidence. All of the evidence is good. The interpretations of the evidence are mistaken in many cases. For ten years now there have been new discoveries of evidence that all move in the direction of supporting this theory (or this school of many theories) and its predictions. Quite a few people have started to pay attention to this theory as well.
