Aggression Studies Flashcards
What are the four lobes of the brain?
What are their functions?
-prefrontal cortex (frontal lobe): problems solving, decision making. If this is nt working you choose wrong decisions.
-pariental lobe: controls your senses
-temporal lobe: used for emotions (overactive-aggressive)
-occipital lobe: sight.
What is the cerebellum for?
Movement.
How is the brain split?
In half- 2 of everything.
Connected via corpus callosum.
What is trepanning?
Surgical invention in which a hole is drilled into the skull to treat problems related to the surface of the brain.
Describe the case of phineas gage.
-He was a railway worker in the mid west USA.
-1848:he suffered an accident when tamping iron. He set off the explosive under a rock and blew the iron rod up through gages face sad out the top of his head.
-for the 11 years rest of his life his personality had a fundamental change, he used to be a reliable religious respectful man but turned irresponsible and aggressive.
What did the doctors conclude about phineas gages case?
That’s tge damage done to his brain, severing the prefrontal cortex and partially the temporal lobe, lead to a change in character.
This shows how the prefrontal cortex has an impact on behaviour and aggression.
What did phineas gages study show?
That damage to frontal lobes seem to cause an increased in aggression.
What are typical studies into the biological structures that underl;one aggression tested with?
What three different types of behaviour do they show?
Rodents and cats.
-offensive behaviour, where they physically attack another animal.
-defensive behaviour, shown in response to threat of attack.
-predatory aggression, which involved attacking another species to gain food.
What does the midbrain contain and what is its role?
It contains an area called PAG which links the amygdala and hyptohalamus with eh prefrontal cortex.
It has a role in coordinating and integrating behavioural responses to internal and external stressors such as pain and threat.
What do lesions in PAG (the midbrain) show?
activated behaviour associated specifically with one type of aggression stimulation of
-medial hypothalamus in a cats brain to produce offensive behaviour.
-the dorsal hypothalamus producing defensive behaviour.
-the lateral hypothalamus resulting in predatory behaviour.
What are the 3 main brain parts for aggression?
Amygdala
Hypothalamus
Prefrontal cortex
What is the role of the amygdala?
Responsible for emotions, emotional behaviour and motivation.
What’s was Raines (1997) amygdala human research?
What did he compare? What did he find?
He compared murderers and non muderers.
Found that there was a significant brain difference between them both.
Murderers had lower glucose metabolism in the left amygdala and greater right amygdala activity.
What may abnormalities in their functioning and amygdala relate to? (Raine 1997)
Abnormalities in their functioning may relate to failure to learn from experience displayed by criminal violent offenders.
Abnormalities in amygdala could be relevant as it may lead to fearlessness, so may reduce emotional responses.
Amygdala animal research (downer 1961)
What did he do? What was the results? What did it provide evidence for?
He removed part of the amygdala in monkeys and optic nerve got cut.
Monkeys received visual signals that either went to the intact amygdala or removed amygdala.
If monkeys had visual input that connected to the intact amygdala, they reacted in their normal way to humans (aggressive)
If their visual input had no amygdala to reach, the monkeys were much calmer and placid.
This provides evidence for the amygdala being involved in aggressive response to perceived threat.
