Group Article: "Aberrant brain gray matter in murderers"

 Article link: Aberrant brain gray matter in murderers


This article explained a study that was conducted on the brains of a number of inmates to determine if there was any sort of common factor in their brain makeups that may help us to better understand why killers kill. The study concluded that violent homicidal inmates actually showed a reduced amount of the gray matter in their brains that are involved in emotional processing, behavioral control, executive function, and social cognition.

I'm sure it's getting annoying because I bring up the argument regarding nature v.s. nurture in almost all of my blog posts these days but I have to do it one more time (I say "one more time" as if it'll be the last time but let's face it, it probably won't be). My question is: what actually causes this reduction in gray matter in the brains of these homicidal killers? Is it something they're born with, supporting the nature argument? Or is it a result of trauma and/or abuse, supporting the nurture argument?

I do believe that this study could bring us a step closer to understanding why killers kill, and I wonder if understanding this could help us to prevent violent homicides to a greater extent in the future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Class Video: "Building Connections: How to Be A Relationship Ninja | Rosan Auyeung-Chen | TEDxSFU"

Video link:  Building Connections: How to Be A Relationship Ninja | Rosan Auyeung-Chen | TEDxSFU Being in my first year of year of college, making connections is a big part of my life right now. It's my first time living away from my family, my first time at such a big school, and my first time not being constantly surrounded by people I'm close to and comfortable with. So when I first got here, I was immediately confronted by the importance of learning to make connections or else my next four years would be really lonely. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at making connections. I'm really shy and introverted and insecure and I tend to get anxious and overwhelmed during social situations. So watching this video was actually quite helpful to me, as Rosan Auyeung-Chen was able to give me some decent insight and advice on the process of making connections. That being said, I would disagree with the idea that there's a step-by-step instructional process for making connec...
Read more

Class Video: "The myth of race | BBC Ideas"

 Video link: The myth of race | BBC Ideas Before watching this video, I didn't understand what people meant when they said that race is a social construct. I always thought that since people have physical characteristics that can indicate their race, that must mean that race is ingrained into our DNA in some way. I was blown away by the idea that I could have a closer relation of genomes with some random person of some random other race than I could with someone of my same race, but that makes the argument that race is a social construct make so much more sense to me. Since there's really nothing in our DNA that indicates our race then that must mean that race is something assigned to us by society. To be honest, race is something I've always been confused by in the sense that I'm not really sure what my race even is. I know I'm Hispanic on my dad's side and White on my mom's side. I've always identified more with my Hispanic side but am I Hispanic enoug...
Read more

Group Video: "Lock-Up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island"

There were many things that stood out to me while watching this film. The first thing I noticed was how a lot of the prisoners were still wearing their own clothes instead of some sort of prison uniforms. In a lot of movies and pieces of media we see prisoners forced to wear a uniform in order to strip them of their individuality (everyone's familiar with the black-and-white stripes or the bright orange jumpsuits) but that wasn't the case in this real-life prison. Another thing I noticed was the immense amount of segregation on Rikers Island. In the prison, not only are male and female prisoners separated but even gay prisoners had their own facility. Additionally, the prisoners would even separate themselves by race within their facilities. Lastly, it was somewhat disturbing to see just how many prisoners accepted the idea that that was their life now. We were introduced to some prisoners who had practically made homes out of their cells, with all their clothes and furniture a...
Read more