*Predicting Violence from Neuroscience...

This is a good example of correct neuroscience but with skeptical implications. While it is true, as mentioned in a previous post, that sociopaths and psychopaths have shown deficiencies in the amygdala not all of them turn out to be "murderers and rapists." There have been suggestions that many CEOs have similar deficiencies.

The policy recommendation of excusing some prisoners due to such a "deficiency" leads to a discussion of crime, responsibility or accountability and law. This is much like pleading mentally ill for a crime. This falls into the category with those who committed somnambulistic murder and those with tumours pressing upon certain brain regions which caused violent aggression and shooting sprees (this was the case of Charles Whitman and his 1966 clocktower shootings in Austin, Texas). Do we excuse these persons in light of neurological evidence? I don't think a neuroscientist is particularly equipped to answer questions of impunity. The empirical data is certainly there and as Raine mentions it has been around for a while. But insofar as I understand the literature, a deficient amygdala has more to do with a lack of empathy and not necessarily a causal predictor for violence (but I don't think I've looked at this literature since '05-06). Nonetheless, the question remains: does this absolve crime? This seems to be an area in which ethics, neuroscience and law will have to discuss further.

Raine's other suggestion of targeting children who have lesions or deficiencies in the amygdala and giving special treatment to those children is, as Paul Wolpe mentions, highly problematic primarily due to the fact that children's brains are still malleable. There have also been much research on self-fulfilling stereotypes with social behaviour and education.

The claim that Raine makes about being "born with" a deficient amygdala has also not been proven - to my knowledge. My understanding is that sociological factors influence that development not genetics. Nobody is born pre-destined to be a murderer.

I'd be curious what other neuroscientists and philosophers who work closely with cognitive neuroscience have to say about this...