amygdala and aggression

Question 1

Charles Whitman

Answer 1

killed 14 people by shooting
said in his suicide note he was having ‘unusual and irrational thoughts’ and wanted an autopsy after death
tumour found to be pressing on his amygdala

Question 2

function of the amygdala

Answer 2

processes external stimuli and formulates an emotional response

Question 3

Blair (2008)

Answer 3

psychopathic persons showed reduced emotional responses to threatening stimuli and in anticipation of punishment, and also reduced aversive conditioning

Question 4

left amygdala function

Answer 4

role in brains reward system

stimulation can induce pleasant and unpleasant emotions

Question 5

right amygdala function

Answer 5

expression of negative emotions when processing fear inducing stimuli and anger regulation
taking action to stimuli
fear conditioning

Question 6

recidivism

Answer 6

tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend

Question 7

how can amygdala damage explain recidivism

Answer 7

issues with fear conditioning

unable to learn from experiences and condition emotions to different types of events

Question 8

Yang et al. procedure

Answer 8

27 psychopathic people
32 controls
structural MRi used to measure amygdala differences - quantitative data gained

Question 9

Yang et al.’s findings

Answer 9

people with psychopathy - 17.1% less volume in left amygdala and 18.9% less volume in right amygdala

Question 10

Glenn et al. (2009)

Answer 10

found both size and functioning of the amygdala is reduced in people with psychopathic tendencies

fmri scans found reduced amygdala activities during moral decision making - psychopathic individuals would worry less about causing harm to others

Question 11

Raine et al. could be used as supporting research from paper 1

Question 12

opposing research - Jim Falllon ??????

Answer 12

looked at PET scans of murderers, schizophrenics, depressives and normal brains

saw a ‘pathological’ scan that showed low activity in amygdala - turned out to be his own