Can they be repaired? Photo: CC/Amber MacPherson
(This one’s for you Lars Loftus, who smashed my middle school friend’s science project to bits one sad afternoon in the 1980s.–mb)
Now we know what makes bullies tick.
University of Chicago psychiatrists claim to have observed some young mens’ brains getting off on violent imagery.
The discovery might lead to interventions that “reprogram the brain circuitry in a way that could help prevent conduct disorder ,” ABC News reports. (my emphasis–mb)
A new study published in the journal Biological Psychology used fMRI scans to compare brain activity in eight unusually aggressive 16- to 18-year-old males to those of eight normal adolescent males while they watched videos of people getting hurt.
While both groups showed activity in the brain’s pain centers, the brains of aggressive males, those with conduct disorder, also showed activity in the brain’s pleasure centers, suggesting that they may have been enjoying what they were seeing. Normal males showed no such activity.