The reason for the aggressive behavior of people is anomalies in the structure of the brain. British doctors suggest using brain scans to identify at-risk adolescents and teach them to cope with their emotions with the help of psychiatrists.
According to statistics, in the UK, five out of a hundred adolescents suffer from conduct disorders. Psychiatrists regard this as a special state of the psyche, which manifests itself in the form of aggressive and antisocial behavior and leads to mental and physical developmental delays.
Scientists from the School of Physiology at the University of Southampton (UK) argue that this behavior can be triggered by changes in the structure of the brain.
A paper published this week in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry compared brain scans of twenty-two adolescents with conduct disorder and twenty adolescents with normal behaviors. Scientists have noticed that
in uncontrollable children, the part of the brain that is usually associated with the feeling of fear (amygdala) is significantly smaller than in adolescents in the control group (that is, children with normal behavior).
At the same time, girls with behavioral disorders have less gray matter in the part of the brain that is responsible for the emergence of emotions and the perception of emotions of other people, and difficult-to-control boys have an increased amount of gray matter.
Scientists have not yet found an explanation for this fact. But in any case, it became obvious that the structure of the brain of "difficult" adolescents differs from the structure of the brain of adolescents in the control group.
Dr. Andy Kadler of the UK Medical Research Council Brain Unit, who was also involved in the study, comments on this anti-social behavior in adolescents as follows:
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"Changes in the brain can be caused by congenital dysfunctional disorders or the influence of environmental factors on early stages of brain development, such as severe stress."
Dr. Michael Craig of King's College London Institute of Psychiatry suggests using brain imaging to detect early behavioral disorders that manifest as antisocial, autism (inability to communicate with people), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Brain changes leading to aggression can also result from physical trauma. Psychologist Hav Williams of the Center for Neurophysiological Research at the University of Exeter in England confirms this in his 36-page report. It presented voluminous studies of prisoners in the UK, USA, Finland, Australia and other countries. For example, among the UK population of people with head injuries, 16.6% and 60% of them went on a criminal path.
In New Zealand, the figures are even more revealing: of 118 prisoners interviewed, 86.4% say they have had head injuries, and 56.7% say they have suffered such injuries more than once.
The author of the report focuses on damage to the frontal lobes of the brain, which complete their development only by the age of 20-25. They are responsible, among other things, for the formation of socially acceptable behavior, decision-making and the suppression of momentary, impulsive actions.