| Popis: |
Socioeconomic and environmental causes of criminal violence are so many, and the role of mental disorders so obvious, that they have been allowed to obscure the contribution of organic brain defects. This should no longer be acceptable in the courts or elsewhere. There is abundant evidence, collected over a century of research, that damage to specific structures in the brain can lead to recurrent attacks of destructive aggression in formerly equable individuals, that this and other disinhibited behaviors can also be associated with covert neurodevelopmental defects incurred before or after birth, and that the liability to violence in such individuals is usually increased by childhood exposure to social adversity, emotional deprivation, and physical or mental abuse, and is reinforced by criminal example. |
