I can't find this information on the internet for some reason but I've seen countless documentaries discussing the subject. Petscans of inmates reveal a correlation between the kind of crime and the criminals brain. There is the normal brain, but then if someone who say stabbed his girlfriend in a rage gets a pet scan they will invariably have similar to the normal brain but an area is inactive that is active in normal people. This seems to be very precisely related to self control as people who had normal pet scans have recieved head injuries that caused this area to be inactive and in fact later murdered someone in a rage. But inmates who were serial killers or calculated killers who killed purely to kill, strangley have completely different pet scans. Not missing an area like impulse killers, but set out differently to the normal structure all together. Rather than having large active patches with some areas blank(like the normal brain) serial killers tend to have small patches scattered uniformly over the whole area. The internet seems to be completely devoid of this information or anything close to it. Or I'm bad at searching. Anyone know more on this? Anyone also seen the documentaries like understanding: murder or one of many others? Its not like I'm making this up, the internet just sucks.
That touches on one of the brain types, I really wanted to find a picture of the 3 petscans side by side. They show it on documentaries all the time and its really interesting. It wierd how "pet scan murderer" or "pet scan sociopath" return NO results in a google image searchPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! World wide web my assPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Perhaps you're looking in the wrong place? A course on criminal psychology, or at least a bookstore would be a more reliable source of information. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Dr. Lou: BRAINS. You're wanting to differentiate between brain patterns in criminals and non criminals right? Allright, we all know the brain works in halves and we also know each side has their personality. Its been shown that criminals have hyperactive right sides, and the right is the emotional side, not very skilled in logic. Now, all of this is interesting but not as much as what I'm going to tell you here- the corpus collusum, like the thalamus, can be thought of as a relay station for language and messages between the two lobes. The prefrontal cortex is what differentiates us from the lower mammals, its more like an inhibiting philosopher if you will. The limbic system is our lower, primitive reptile brain which caters to the primal drives like insitnct. When pictures or words dealing with murder, slaughter, or debauchary are flashed to 'normal' pepole these areas flare up, as in alarm. The interesting thing is that these areas DO NOT flare up on an MRI when the same things are shown to the criminal mind (and no I do not have pictures for you, I do recommend reading V.S. Ramachandran- all of his books are fucking incredible). You'd expect the opposite- that these areas would flare up in these wild people but it seems that the mere presence of the prefrontal cortex has desentized them to the criminal environment. This suggests that this area that makes us , the human animal, the wonder that we are with our logic and technology and art and virtue also allows for the most devious phenomenas unleashed on this planet: Sadism, pointless homicide, debauchary. I'd say more but have I bored you? Lost you maybe?
There are 3 basic structures petscans will show, those articles, and that gendanken, have addressed 2 of them, "normal" and "dumb criminal". Dumb criminal is actually the same as normal accept a piece of the brain doesn't work. There is a 3rd though I have seen talked about many times on criminal psychology documentaries. Agendaless serial killers invariably have this petscan result. Its not even set out like the normal brain. Where the normal brain petscan comes up with certain regions thick with activity and other parts blank. These serial killers have a uniform scatter of activity covering the whole brain. Ahh, I found the comparitive petscans, I think you'll be interested in this picture gendanken;
