Biological explanation: Neural

Question 1

Neural explanation:

Answer 1

• focuses on the differences/ abnormalities in the brains of criminals

Question 2

Pre-frontal cortex:

Answer 2

Responsible for emotion and moral behaviour

Question 3

Raine:

Answer 3

• 11% reduction in volume of grey matter in PFC for individuals with APD

Question 4

Raine: Meta analysis

Answer 4

• Cited 71 brain imaging studies showing murderers, APD and violent individuals as having reduced functioning in the pre-frontal cortex
• Reduced functioning of the PFC results in offending because they can’t think emotionally or they can’t think rationally so they commit crime

Question 5

Mirror neurons:

Answer 5

• Allows empathy - normal people don’t have an on and off switch
• criminals mirror neurons don’t fire properly
• people with APD have their neuronal switch off

Answer 6

Limitation of neural:
- Doesn’t demonstrate causation
- A change in biological function may be the consequence of the behaviour
- This contradicts the neural explanation as they believe that it is the cause
- This shows how there is only correlation instead of causation to explain this

Answer 7

Strength of the neural explanation: Supporting link between crime and the frontal lobe
- Kandel and Freed
- reviewed evidence of frontal lobe damage
- People with damage showed impulsive behaviour, emotional instability and inability to learn from their mistakes
- Supports that brain damage may be a causal factor in offending behaviour