Turning to crime - biology

Raine - brain dysfunction

• investigate brain functioning using PET scans in a group of murderers who pleaded NGRI
• 41 NGRI compared to 41 controls
• Matched on age and gender and 6 NGRIs diagnosed with schizophrenia matched with six controls with same diagnosis
• NGRIs referred to imaging centre for legal reasons
• All kept medication free
• All injected with glucose tracer - required to work at continuous perfomance tasks based around target recognition for 32 mins then given PET scan
• NGRIs less activity in their prefrontal and parietal areas
• amygdala  and hippocampus NGRIs less activity in left side, more in right
• thalamus - NGRIs more activity in right side,…