Esch, T., & Stefano, G.B. (2007). The neurobiology of love. Activitas Nervosa Superior, 49, 1-18.

Bob, P. (2008). Dissociation and Neurobiological Consequences of Traumatic Stress. Activitas Nervosa Superior, 50, 9-14.

Further studies in this field are needed to pay attention especially to modern a detailed evaluation of brain activity in the group of impulsively aggressive perpetrator

the correlation of increased impulsiveness and hypofrontality in individuals in the second stage of alcoholism,

t is likely that the cognitive deficit related to impulsive forms of aggressive behavior could be located in a single cortical area

possible existence of a neurophysiologic correlate for impulsively aggressive delinquent behavior in the framework of the “uncontrolled affect”.

results suggest a presence of cognitive deficits and/or attentional system deficits, and likely the existence of a specific sensory system in individuals with impulsively aggressive behav

mpulsive agresive behavior may have a different neurophysiological corelates and therefore from the clinical and forensic point of view represent a totally different category from non-impulsive aggressive behavior.

significantly higher occurrence of specific and non-specific EEG changes in offenders of violent criminal activity evaluated as impulsive, non-deliberate, affectively motivated and affectively aggressive

neither specific nor non specific EEG findings as predictors of criminal behavior in general

more advanced recording techniques, higher numbers of electrodes placed, and better artifact control may be responsible for the differences from earlier results

previously reported findings of a general increase in nonspecific EEG abnormalities associated with violent recidivism in general (Pillman et al., 1999) were not confirmed by our investigation.

recidivism

significant EEG abnormalities only in the group of impulsive criminals

mpulsive aggressive offenders shows the most significant difference in EEG abnormalities in comparison to healthy control

the most significant difference is found in total count of EEG abnormalities and alpha abnormalities.

Different statistical significance in delta or theta abnormality was not found even between groups of impulsive criminals and control group

Total count of abnormalities was found as the most significant differentiating parameter among studied group

70% of subjects show an EEG abnormality and multiple abnormalities were found in 35%. Non-impulsive delinquents still show higher rate of EEG abnormalities incidence - 30% and multiple abnormalities in 5%. Other groups – thefts and control group show no significant EEG changes.

anamnesis

Four groups of subjects were compared in the study.

to find specific changes in EEG in persons with three types of criminal behavior without psychiatric history in comparison to healthy controls.

impairment of left hemisphere functions may enhance the propensity for violent behavior in a subgroup of offenders

focal abnormalities, however, especially of the left hemisphere, were related to a significantly higher number of violent offenses

paroxysmal activity

the studies suffered from methodological problems.

to address the empirical basis and forensic application ofa bimodal theory of violence

Elliot FA. Neurology of aggression and episodic dyscontrol.Semin Neurol1990;10:303–12

Kandel E. Biology, violence and antisocial personality.JForensic Sci1992;37:912–18.

Raine A, Meloy JR, Bihrle S,et al. Reduced prefrontal andincreased subcortical brain functioning assessed usingpositron emission tomography in predatory and aVectivemurderers.Behav Sci Law1998;16:319–32.

Krakowski M, Czobor P, Carpenter MD,et al. Communityviolence and inpatient assaults: neurobiological deficits.JNeuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci1997;9:549–55.

Blake PY, Pincus JH, Buckner C. Neurologic abnormalitiesin murderers.Neurology1995;45:1641–7

Foster HG, Hillbrand M, Silverstein M. Neuropsychologi-cal deficit and aggressive behavior: a prospective study.ProgNeuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry1993;17:939–46.

Pennington BF, OzonoVS. Executive functions anddevelopmental psychopathology.J Child Psychol Psychiatry1996;37:51–87.

Hare RD, McPherson LM. Violent and aggressive behaviorby criminal psychopaths. Special issue: empirical ap-proaches to law and psychiatry.Int J Law Psychiatry1984;7:35–50

Hare RD, Harpur TJ, Hakstian AR,et al. The revisedpsychopathy checklist: reliability and factor structure.Psy-chol Assess1990;2:338–41

Pincus JH. Aggression, criminality, and the frontal lobes. In:Miller BL, Cummings JL, eds,The human frontal lobes:func-tions and disorders. New York: The Guildford Press, 1999

forensically informed, interdiscipli-nary approach that integrates neuropsychiat-ric, neuropsychological, and psychophysiologi-cal methods for the study of brain localisation,social cognition, and emotional processing

neuropsychiatric evaluation of violentpatients should include clinical assessment forfrontal lobe impairment and neuropsychologi-cal evaluation of executive functions,

Accurate measurement of theincreased risk of violence in subjects with pre-frontal dysfunction also requires comparisonwith rates of aggression in appropriate controls

future studies testing the relation betweenfrontal lobe dysfunction and aggression shouldincorporate controls for known risk factorscontributing to violent behaviour

The actual frequency of violent behav-iour, however, seems relatively low

focal orbitofron-tal injury specifically impairs capacities forsocial judgment, risk avoidance, and empathythat inhibit inappropriate or reflexive aggres-sion

Retrospective data strongly support alink between the disinhibited type of frontalnetwork syndrome and aggressive dyscontrol

Retrospective

Executivefunction deficits, therefore, may increase therisk of violence via direct eVects on impulsecontrol or through associated psychosocialeVects, or both, either interactively or inde-pendently

Resulting educational and social failure likelycontribute to aggressive and antisocial lifeadaptation,

d poverty.4Studies of subjects with acquired frontal lobeinjury support the expected association ofincreased aggression with focal orbitofrontal,or ventromedial frontal injury

few studies attributing violent crime tofrontal lobe dysfunction adequately addressconcurrent psychosocial variables

grossmeasures of brain function with low specificityand questionable clinical significance, whilefailing suYciently to relate the clinical data tothe specific aggressive behaviours in question

do not mirror the gen-eral population or even the larger criminalpopulation.

lack of prospective data, small subjectnumbers and lack of adequate controls forknown violence risk factors

Subjects with both traumatic and neurodegen-erative disorders primarily involving the pre-frontal cortex display increased rates of aggres-sive and antisocial behaviour compared withsubjects who have no, or non-frontal braininjury. Studies employing neuropsychologicaltesting, neurological examination, EEG, andneuroimaging have also tended to find evi-dence for increased rates of prefrontal networkdysfunction among aggressive and antisocialsubjects. Prefrontal network dysfunction seemsto be most specifically associated with a recur-rent, impulsive subtype of aggression that maycontribute to some violent behaviour.

The reportedreductions in prefrontal size or activity may,therefore, represent a predisposition to aVec-tive states relevant to aggressive behaviour,without necessarily signifying an incapacity toavoid actual violent acts.

These inconsistenciesmay reflect variation related to experimentalconditions, limitations of imaging technology,or subject selection. Most of the subjects inthese studies had known or suspected psychiat-ric disorders potentially contributing to altera-tions in prefrontal function.

a strong associationbetween increased aggression and reducedprefrontal cortical size or activity

AVective mur-derers had significantly lower prefrontal meta-bolic activity compared with controls, whereasfrontal metabolism in predatory murderersresembled controls

aVective

predatory

do not represent violent criminals in general.The mere presence of EEG abnormalities orfrontal neurological signs also does not explainwhether, or how, such findings contributed tobehaviour at the time of an alleged crime

clinical signs offrontal lobe dysfunction are prevalent in popu-lations of persons prone to violent and antiso-cial behaviour

Table 1

Table 2

Persistently violent patients, however, hadsignificantly more frontal lobe impairmentthan transiently violent patients and theirbehaviour seemed less responsive to environ-mental factors.

EEG

abnormal frontal EEG activ-ity, as well as diminished frontal event relatedpotentials, correlating with antisocial personal-ity disorder or histories of aggression

In populations with prior risk of antisocialbehaviour or aggression, the presence ofexecutive function deficits may have value inassessing the future likelihood of aggression

these neuropsychological studiestend to support a significant associationbetween prefrontal executive dysfunction

psychopathic criminals showed sig-nificant deficits on tests specifically selected toassess orbitofrontal and ventromedial function-ing.

A prospective study found that low scores onexecutive function tests significantly predictedself reported aggression in 10 to 12 year oldboys with paternal histories of substancemisuse

comorbid attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) mostlikely accounted for deficits in frontal executivefunction linked with adolescent conduct disor-der, but considered that ADHD might worsenaggression in such cases

executivefunction

All of these studies were retrospective, andmost did not adequately control for knownviolence risk factors.

focal mediofrontal

subjects with lesions limited to thefrontal lobes tended to show more aggressiveand violent behaviours compared with patientswith non-frontal head injury and controlswithout head injury.

cohorts of warveterans with head injury have also tended tofind an association between frontal lobe lesionsand aggressive or antisocial behaviou

Case reports have described a similarsyndrome of “acquired sociopathy” in personswho had ventromedial prefrontal injury inadulthood.14–

al-though the prevalence of actual violent crimeseems small

ventromedial prefrontal injury

gross dysregulation of aVect and behaviourmay occur while cognitive, motor, and sensoryfunctioning remain relatively intact.

orbitofrontal cortex

(1)studies relating clinical focal frontal lobe disor-ders to violent behaviour; (2) studies reportingneuropsychological measures of frontal lobefunction in aggressive and antisocial subjects;(3) studies of clinical neurological findings inviolent and criminal populations; and (4) neu-roimaging studies of aggressive and violentsubjects

“Violence” refers to actions that inflict physicalharm in violation of social norms.

aggression as anythreatening or physically assaultive behaviourdirected at persons or the environment

clinical, laboratory, or neuropsycho-logical test data relating frontal lobe function toaggression, crime, or violence

the strength of this hypothesised associ-ation has yet to be established

Methods

To establish the link betweenfrontal lobe dysfunction and violent andcriminal behaviour, based on a review ofrelevant literature.

Neuropsychiatry of frontal lobe dysfunction inviolent and criminal behaviour

Neuropsychiatry

Aim of this research was to determine whether differences in clinical picture of psy-chopathy (on the basis of which subtypes of psychopathy are identified) reflect differences in pathology of personality organization (integration)

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 19: 109–124 (2009)DOI: 10.1002/cbmFamily factors inthe intergenerational transmission of offending

discovering the exact origin and process in devel-oping this skill remains elusive but an important topic for future research

But thatuntrained and inexperienced chemistry students can produce relatively accu-rateprofilesarguesthatinvestigativeexperienceisnottheonlyroutetodevel-oping this skill

Thepolicedetectivesinourgroupdidnothaveanyspecifictrainingat profiling and, as such, may have had only raw knowledge from experiencethat, for whatever reason, was not effectively applied to this case

erroneous

arebasedonprejudiceorotherbiasestheyhavelearnedovertheyearsandnotconsistent with the actual relationships in the real world.

the more experience youget investigating crime, the more that experience gets in the way of makingsense of the data regarding a crime under investigation and so the worse youdo at profiling

Per-haps, the true cause of effective profiling may be something correlated withthe attainment of or willingness to pursue higher education

The most apparent common element to all of these groups istheir current enrollment in or completion of a degree within a university

Thegroupsthatseemedtodothebestinourstudywereuniversitystudentsand the police recruits, all of whom were currently enrolled in a universitydiploma program

Indeed, the sampledrecruits were selected under a new police recruitment program that requiresthat all recruits to enroll in and complete a university diploma.

Thus, the observed trend in perfor-mance may, to some degree, be a derivative of the evolving criteria for policerecruitment and training

One possibility relates to the varying generations from whicheach of the sampled police groups actually originate.

these findings not support the role of investigative experienceas the key to effective profiling

congruent

Indeed, the profiler training program of the FBI iden-tifies seniority and accomplishment in policing as essential prerequisites forits training program

Although entrance to profiling training programs such as the oneoffered by the FBI requires seniority and accomplishment as a police officer,we wonder based on these results whether this policy is worth reexamining

the chemistry students equaled or outperformed allpolice groups on all but the cognitive responses measure of accuracy.

performance was inversely related to experience

Homicide detectives answered significantly fewer questions correctlyabout social history and habits of the offender than did the police recruits

we anticipated that homicidedetectives would outperform senior detectives, who would outperformtrainee detectives, who would outperform police

Second, we recruited a group of college students majoring in chemistry tocompletetheprocedure

Weemployed two control groups as a performance standard. First, as in our pre-vious study, we asked a group of people to fill out the questionnaire withoutproviding them any information whatsoever about the specific case except itstype (i.e., murder).

This allowed for the examination of the accuracy of the four groups com-pared to the accuracy obtained by luck or simple knowledge of the social ste-reotype of the typical murder.

Participants

First, a group of senior police detectives who possessedsubstantial experience in criminal investigations participated. Second, werecruited a group of detectives who specialized in the investigation of homi-cide. Third, to contrast investigative experience to general experience as apolice officer, a sample of trainee detectives who possessed significant expe-rience in police general duties but only a marginal amount of experience incriminal investigations was obtained. Finally, a sample of police recruits wasalso used.

In the current study, the accuracy of four distinct groups of police person-nel was examined.

he importance of investigativeexperience is premised on the quantity of experience being correlated withprofiling performance.

the unex-pectedly poor performance of the police deserves further examination

the police were no more accurate than anyone else in their depiction oftheoffender

several skillsthat they regard as necessary for effective profiling, among them being anunderstanding of the criminal mind, investigative experience, an ability tothink logically and objectively, and intuition.

Psychological profiling is the investigativetechnique of analyzing crimebehaviors for the identification of probable offender characteristics

empirical research