Researchers have linked violent behavior to abnormalities in the brain – and believe early detection may help authorities zero in on would-be murderers before they even think of attacking, according to a report.
A study of almost 1,000 prisoners has revealed brain abnormalities among those locked up for homicide, leading the researchers to look into ways of preventing violent acts through therapy and medication, according to NBC Bay Area.
“I think we’re getting there in terms of finding areas of the brain that may explain homicidal behavior,” Dr. Hannes Vogel, director of Neuropathology at Stanford University, told the news outlet in the wake of several recent mass shootings across the US.
Vogel, who normally dissects brains in search of tumors and diseases, was pulled into a criminal probe after the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017 that left 58 dead and 422 wounded.
The Las Vegas County coroner sought his help in examining the brain of the mass shooter, Stephen Paddock, 64, who killed himself after spraying gunfire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel.
“I happened to be on a speaking engagement in Europe and got a call in the middle of the night, and they said they wanted to send me the brain, and it was hand-delivered to me,” Vogel said.
“I was asked to diagnose and rule out certain disease processes that might have contributed to his behavior,” he added.
Vogel set out to conduct the examination on the gunman’s brain.
“I would take a scalpel and cut out a portion of the brain, and that ultimately ends up as a slice on a microscope slide with special stain that I look at under the microscope,” he said.
Vogel found large amounts of a kind of scarring of the brain tissue called corpora amylacea.
The large, complex molecules normally accumulate during the aging process and can be present with various brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
But what stood out to Vogel was how much was found in Paddock’s organ.
“The quasi-scarring process in the brain was higher than the average 60-something-year-old male,” he told NBC about the areas of the brain that are responsible for decision-making, emotion and anger.
Vogel was unable to draw any connection to the shooter’s behavior because the corpora amylacea remains poorly understood in neuroscience.
“The significance of it is totally unknown,” he said.
Meanwhile, in another lab at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, research inside prisons is revealing even more about killers’ minds.
“Prevention – that is the ultimate goal,” Dr. Kent Kiehl, neuroscientist and psychologist at the Mind Research Network, told the station.
To scan the brains of murderers, Kiehl and his team built a mobile MRI brain scanner, places it into a truck and drove the machine to 10 prisons.
“The prisoners are very happy to participate in the research, ” Kiehl said. “That gives them an opportunity to interact and talk with an expert … who is going to give them a chance to confidentially talk about all their problems and issues which they may not want to share with anybody else.”
Over the past 10 years, the team has scanned the brains of 998 prisoners, with the findings showing that the brains of killers are markedly different from the rest of the population.
“There are regions of the brain in individuals who’ve committed a homicide that truly are different than … their peers,” Kiehl said.
His latest study shows that specific sections of the brain that are responsible for controlling emotions, impulses and social awareness are less developed among killers.
“We’re finding for the first time that they are quite different,” Kiehl said. “So now, it’s a question of how did they get that way? How might we understand this information?”
Kiehl, who believes people are born with those brain differences, said therapy and medications can physically change the brain to reduce the risk of dangerous behavior.
“We’re going to try to implement treatments that we know work on those systems of the brain. Then we would hopefully see changes that would prevent these types of things from ever happening,” he said.