Week 3 Flashcards
Brain development
What are the key events before birth of the brain development
- 25% of brain development occurs prenatally.–> during pregnancy what is going on is IMPORTANT
- Brain and nervous system emerge at 3-4 weeks.
- Over a billion neurons at birth.
- Neurons specialize and connect from the 8th week. (myelination and synaptogenesis)
- Maternal health, nutrition, and environment impact fetal brain development.
What are the key events of brain development across the lifespn?
- Early Childhood: Rapid brain connectivity growth - 80% adult size by age 4.
- Connectivity: Genetically and experience-driven
- Synaptic Pruning: Refines connections based on sensory, motor, language, and cognitive experience.
- Adulthood: Frontal-lobe development (last part that develops and still grows) - judgment, planning, risk assessment matures by 25.
- Synaptic Pruning (Ages 10-16): Strengthens used connections, discards unused ones.
- Behavioral Level: Insight, judgment, inhibition, reasoning, social conscience.
- **Frontal Lobe Activity: Decision-making, problem-solving, behavior control, consciousness, emotions.- last part of the brain that develops and still grows after **
5
Key Brain Areas for Social Behavior- more relevant for offending behaviour
* Orbital Prefrontal Cortex (OPFC):
* Located at the front of the brain.
* Crucial for emotional control and impulse regulation.
* Critical for adaptive behavior.
* Amygdala:
* Deep within the temporal lobe.
* Functions include arousal, fear, emotion, and memory control.
* Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC):
* Below the cerebral cortices.
* Supports communication, cooperation, empathy.
* Damage can reduce empathy, emotional stability, and social behavior.
* Insular Cortex:
* Part of cerebral cortex.
* Responsible for social emotions (e.g., lust, disgust, guilt).
* Enables vicarious sharing of emotions.
* Basal Ganglia:
* Located in the forebrain.
* Involved in various functions, including cognition and emotions.
what are the links between in individuals with antisocial personality disorder and psychopathic offenders and brain structural and functional abnormalities/differences compared to healthy controls?
specific brain areas that form what we called the social brain that involved in emotion regulation and control of impulse, arousal and emotion processing (such as fear) may be functioning differently in these individuals and might contribute to why these people are more prone to offending behaviour.
what do they look at
what is behavioural genetic contribution?
they estimate the contribution of heritable or environmental factors to individual differences- in this case antisocial behaviour
what behavioural genetic study found by comparing monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (non-identical) twins?
shared enviromental factors make a huge contribution
-non shared enviroment in twins, identical twins don’t resemble each other as it would be expcted by genetics
not just contribution of both
what are the further insights of studies on exploring genetic and environmental factors on antisocial behaviour?
- Emphasizes the need to differentiate between various forms of antisocial behavior. –> in aggressive behaviour. it’s more heritability that counts
- Highlights the importance of investigating sex differences observed in antisocial behavior.
callous unemotional traits- how much is heritable and how much is driven by environment?
- Estimates indicate that 40–78% of the variation in these traits is due to genetic contributions.
- High levels of callous-unemotional traits (top 10%) are influenced by genetics (h² = 0.67).
TAKE HOME MESSAGE: genetics and environmental factors are linked
Psychopathic Traits Overview
- Psychopathic Traits Overview:
- Affective (e.g., lack of empathy, guilt, shallow emotions) and interpersonal deficits (e.g., superficial charm).
- Overt impulsive, irresponsible, and antisocial behavior.
What is callous unemotional traits?
- Distinguish a subgroup of youths with conduct problems.
- Indicate a more severe and stable pattern of antisocial behavior.- lack of remorse etc. -> core component in psychopathology but in children.
what disorder is often a precursor to antisocial behaviour
Conduct disorder
Why is it important to understand developmental risk factors? What could result from risk factors?
- crucial to comprehend their impact on the brain
- It’s the first step to address and mitigate risk factors
- they could result in:
- Social withdrawal.
- Pathological shyness.
- Explosive and inappropriate emotionality.
- Inability to form normal emotional attachments.
- Predisposition to later criminality (Joseph, 2003).
What are the prenatal risk factors?
- Smoking during pregnancy, drug use.
- Maternal alcohol consumption leading to fetal alcohol syndrome/fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FAS; FASD).
- MPAs and Abnormal Fetal Development
What are Perinatal and post-natal risk factors
Perinatal: Obstetrical Complications, maternal rejection
Postnatal:
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
Problematic parental-child interactions(attachment)
Trumatic brain injury
What the research says about ACEs and criminality
- look at prevalence of the treatment in the prison population and normative population – showed that maltreatment is higher is prison population
- problematic childhood is definitely a contributing factors to offending
- Generally prioson population had maltreatmnts contribution in childhood
