Maybe all pyschopathic criminals need is prozac which
increases serotonin levels
excerpt
Psychopathy consists of a group of personality traits and
behaviors, which includes irresponsibility, impulsivity, hedonism,
selfishness, egocentricity, low frustration tolerance, lack of guilt,
remorse or shame. Psychopaths are selfish, callous, and exploitative
in their use of others, and often become involved in socially deviant
behaviors. These traits and behaviors appear in psychopaths without
the signs of psychosis, neurosis, or mental deficiency found in most
other mental illnesses. Psychopaths make up approximately 15 to 20
percent of criminal populations but are responsible for more crimes
and violent acts.
In comparison addicts are also irresponsible, impulsive, hedonistic,
selfish, egocentric, and have a low frustration tolerance. Unlike
psychopaths, they're not without guilt, remorse or shame, which is the
major difference between the two. Addicts are also selfish, sometimes
callous, and often exploitative in their use of others, and depending
on their drug of choice, will participate in socially deviant
behaviors. Addicts make up approximately 70 percent of criminal
populations and are responsible for more crimes and violent acts than
even psychopaths.
The personality structure and life history of the psychopath are quite
different from those whose antisocial or criminal behavior is related
to an emotional disturbance, and from those of a person whose
antisocial behavior results from living in a criminal subculture or in
an environment in which such behavior is expected or rewarded, such as
the criminal behavior resulting from chemical dependency. Unlike the
psychopath, these individuals may be capable of forming strong
affectionate relationships and of experiencing concern and guilt over
their behavior.
Psychopaths are usually loners. Although they associate with people
they ‘call' friends, no one ever really knows them. They are
pathological liars; however, even the lies that are seemingly
senseless makes sense when one understands their motives. When they
believe they are getting over on someone, they feel that they have the
edge. Every time they get away with something, they find it exciting.
These attributes aren't as fixed in addicts as much as they are in
psychopaths. So much depends on the duration of addiction, drug of
choice, and personal history, not to mention socioeconomic and
cultural background.
Psychopaths take from others, but rarely give anything without an
ulterior motive. These people don't know what trust, love, or loyalty
is. If they can gain something for themselves, they will betray their
best buddy. These people are so focused on pursuing their immediate
objectives that they don't care what others think, nor do they
consider their feelings. Invariably, they hurt those who care about
them most. In one way or another, the psychopath's mothers, fathers,
brothers, sisters, spouses, and children all become his victims with
no feeling of remorse.
A man who had killed two police officers commented with complete
sincerity that just because he murdered a couple of people, he was not
a bad person (p. 218, 219).
Preschool aged children also have characteristics that predict
chemical dependency, but they aren't as easy to identify because those
same characteristics also predict crime and other types of antisocial
behavior
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Raine and his colleagues compared the brain images of 792 antisocial
individuals with 704 control subjects. They found that antisocial
individuals also tended to have overlapping damage in brain structures
involved in making moral judgments, most notably the dorsal and
ventral prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the angular gyrus.
"If offenders are not fully responsible for the source of the brain
dysfunction that impairs their moral-decision making, this raises a
significant neuroethical issue regarding the appropriate level of
punishment for those who perpetrate morally inappropriate acts," Raine
says.
New studies from the University of California, San Diego, are helping
scientists better understand what goes on in the brains of some
teenage boys who respond with inappropriate anger and aggression to
perceived threats. Preliminary findings from these studies suggest
that such behavior is associated with a hyperactive response in the
amygdala, an area of the brain that processes information regarding
threats and fear, and with a lessening of activity in the frontal
lobe, a brain region linked to decision-making and impulse control.
To perform their most recent studies, de Boer and his colleagues
engendered violent characteristics of aggressive behavior in feral
mice and rats by permitting them to physically dominate other rodents
repeatedly. With such positive reinforcement, the animals' initially
normal aggressiveness gradually became transformed into a more
pathological form-the kind also seen in pathologically violent people.
During this transformation, de Boer studied the chemical changes that
occurred in the rodents' aggression-related brain circuits,
particularly those circuits involved with serotonin. They found that
serotonin activity decreased as a result of the animals experiencing
repeated victorious episodes of aggression but not as a result of
normal, functional acts of aggression.
"Our findings support meta-analyses of serotonin activity in
aggressive humans," says de Boer. "That data showed that serotonin
deficiency is most readily detected in people who engage in impulsive
and violent forms of aggressive behavior rather than in individuals
with more functional forms of aggression."
More recently, de Boer and his colleagues have found that the
transition from normal, adaptive aggressive behavior into abnormal
forms that inflict harm and injury is due to functional, but not
structural, changes in certain serotonin receptors in the brain. In
animal studies, treatment with selective serotonin receptor agonist
compounds has been found to restore the normal function of these
receptors-and suppress aggressive behavior, including its escalated
forms. These findings may one day lead to more effective treatments
for violent behavior in humans.
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