Find out how a killer's brain works

You might imagine that people who kill other people coldly have some kind of psychopathy, which is nothing more than a lack of feelings of guilt, remorse, and especially empathy - the ability to put oneself in another's shoes. In addition, psychopaths are impulsive, egocentric, superficial, and antisocial people.

While these characteristics may be a description of a psychopathic person, science was still unsure how a killer's brain worked, and thanks to a study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, it is now possible to understand how the mind works. from someone who has the courage to kill another human being.

Tests

Psychologist Pascal Molenberghs of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, analyzed the brain activity of 48 volunteers using functional magnetic resonance imaging. During the test, these people watched three different videos, one after the other.

The first video showed a soldier killing an enemy soldier; In the second video, the soldier was killing a civilian; In the last movie, the soldier fired his gun but didn't hit anyone. On all three occasions, the volunteers watched the scenes from the shooter's point of view and at the end of the session were asked who they had shot.

Then they should choose: soldier, civilian or no one. By answering these questions, the volunteers showed scientists that they were really aware of their choices. Then they needed to say how much guilt, at a level from 1 to 7, they felt in each scenario.

Image Interpretation

In interpreting the images made during the research, Molenberghs gave priority to the region of the orbitofrontal cortex, which is responsible for producing sensations of morality, judgment and also for commanding the way we behave accordingly. The analysis of the region known as the temporoparietal junction, in a location close to the orbitofrontal cortex, also makes it possible to evaluate moral issues and even the sense of action, which is the act of having an attitude and knowing that one is responsible for it.

After analyzing the results, Molenberghs realized that volunteers showed a significant increase in work in the orbitofrontal cortex when shooting at civilians - there was not as much activity as participants imagined shooting at soldiers. In addition, there was a strong connection between the activities of the orbitofrontal cortex (guilt) and the temporoparietal junction (which justifies this sense of guilt).

Another curious observation: the more the volunteers claimed to be guilty of death, the more active the orbitofrontal cortex became. The most guilty people had this more stimulated brain area.

It is noteworthy that the analysis process did not involve the observation of only these two brain regions. Fusiform gyrus activity, responsible for analyzing faces, was most attenuated when individuals imagined they were killing civilians. This suggests that the volunteers also thought about the facial expressions of their “victims”, which humanizes the situation and causes more blame.

When soldiers were killed, another brain region was triggered more strongly, the lingual gyrus, responsible for colder reactions, when we put emotion aside. This region is believed to be overactivated in people who kill criminally.

Of course murderers and soldiers have different emotional conditions, and when they kill, they do so for various reasons as well. In any case, the act of killing a person is the same regardless of the situation, so the brain regions involved are the same, even when they are activated in different ways.

It is becoming increasingly clear to neuroscience that the neural and moral activities of a killer's brain are closely related. Deconstructing these relationships can be a way for psychologists and criminalists to tell in the future whether a person is capable of killing and thus to interrupt them before they do so.

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So what do you think about this kind of research? Do you believe these studies can help mankind to reduce homicides one day? Tell us in the comments!