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The Raelian Movement
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Could brain abnormalities cause antisocial behavior and drug abuse in boys?
http://www.physorg.com/news204457188.html
September 23, 2010
Antisocial boys who abuse drugs, break laws, and act recklessly are
not just "bad" kids. Many of these boys may have malfunctioning
brains, according to a new study by researchers at the University of
Colorado School of Medicine.
"Brain responses to everyday rewards and punishments gradually guide
most youngsters' decisions to conform with society's rules. However,
when these seriously troubled kids experience rewards and punishments,
and make decisions, their brains apparently malfunction," said Thomas
Crowley, MD, a professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine and
lead author on the study. "Our findings strongly suggest that brain
malfunction underlies their frequent failure to conform to rules, to
make wise decisions, and to avoid relapses back to drug use and
antisocial acts."
The scientists, including collaborators at the University of Colorado
at Boulder and the University of Maryland, studied 20 adolescent boys.
On average they had been on probation 139 of the last 180 days; 19 of
the 20 had the psychiatric diagnosis of conduct disorder, and all had
diagnoses of substance use disorder. They had been abstinent, however,
an average of about five weeks when studied. They were compared with
20 other boys who did not have serious antisocial or drug problems,
but who were of similar age, ethnicity, and home neighborhoods.
All played a computerized risk-taking game that repeatedly presented a
choice between a cautious and a risky behavior: press the left button
and always win one cent, or press the right button and either win five
cents or lose ten cents. The scientists examined brain activation with
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as the boys decided to
press right or left, and then as they experienced wins or losses after
right presses.
Brain activation differed dramatically in the two groups. The anterior
cingulate cortex monitors changing rewards and punishments, and then
sends that information to another brain region (dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex), which regulates one's choices among possible
behaviors. During decision-making, antisocial boys had significantly
less brain activity than normals in both of those regions, and also in
other decision-making areas (orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula).
Altogether, during decision-making about 6000 voxels (a voxel is a
tiny cube in the brain) activated significantly less in antisocial
boys than in comparison boys. No voxels activated more in antisocial
boys. Such under-activity during decision-making could contribute to
disinhibited antisocial and drug-using behaviors.
As predicted by others not associated with the study, the antisocial
boys also had dysphoria, a chronic sad-anxious state, with "reward
insensitivity"; in the game their brains responded less than the
comparison boys' brains to wins. They also had "punishment
hypersensitivity", with greater brain response to losses than
comparison boys.
Interestingly, the number of risky right presses was similar in the
two groups. The scientists speculate that this occurred because the
game forced the boys to deliberate for several seconds before pressing
either button.
More information: The report was published today in the online
journal, Public Library of Science One (PLoS One), and it is freely
available.
Provided by University of Colorado Denver
"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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