Criminal Mind

Forensic Psychology
4MPCL
•In 2008, India became the first country to convict someone
of a crime relying on evidence from an EEG brain scan. Aditi
Sharma, a 24-year old business student from Pune, was
convicted of killing her ex-fiancé by poisoning him. The case
generated worldwide attention, but the verdict was
overturned a year later. In June 2021, Sharma and her new
partner were eventually found guilty of the crime, and the
veracity of the brain scan was never called into question.
Brain Structure and Function
• The amygdala — a part of the brain involved in fear, aggression and social
interactions — is implicated in crime.
• Among the research that points to this link is a neuroimaging study led by
Dustin Pardini, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh. His team found that
26-year-old men with lower amygdala volumes were more than three
times more likely to be aggressive, violent and to show psychopathic traits
three years later than men of the same age with more normal-sized
amygdalas — independent of factors including history of violence and
social background (Biological Psychiatry, 2013).
• Other research, such as an fMRI study led by psychologist Andrea Glenn,
PhD, of the University of Alabama, suggest that amygdala functioning —
not just size — is also more likely to be reduced among those with
psychopathic tendencies (Molecular Psychiatry, 2009).
Brain Structure and Function
• At least one study indicates that such deficits may appear long before people commit
crimes.
• Adrian Raine, DPhil, of the department of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania,
led a study with Yu Gao, PhD, at CUNY-Brooklyn that examined fear conditioning, which is
dependent on amygdala function, in a group of 1,795 3-year-olds.
• The researchers put electrodes on the children's fingers while repeatedly playing two
tones: one that was followed by a loud, unpleasant sound and another that was played
alone. Subsequently, the difference in sweat responses to each tone by itself yielded a
measure of each toddler's fear conditioning.
• Twenty years later, the team identified participants who had gone on to commit crimes
and compared them with noncriminal counterparts, matching them on gender, ethnicity
and social adversity. They found that those children who went on to commit crimes had
"simply failed" to demonstrate fear conditioning, Raine says. In other words, they were
fearless when most of us would be fearful. This finding suggests that deficits in the
amygdala, which are indirectly identifiable as early as age 3, predispose to crime at age 23
(The American Journal of Psychiatry, 2010).
Brain Structure and Function
• The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which plays a major role in
behavior regulation and impulsivity, has also been linked to crime.
Psychologist Kent Kiehl, PhD, and colleagues at the University of New
Mexico used fMRI to look at the brains of nearly 100 adult male
inmates while they completed a cognitive task involving inhibitory
control. They found that prisoners with lower ACC activity were twice
as likely to reoffend four years after they left prison than prisoners
with higher ACC activity (PNAS, 2013). While such studies need
replication and extension, Raine says, they are "proof of the concept
that there may be added value with bringing on board
neurobiological information, including brain imaging information, for
future prediction of violence."
Brain Structure and Function
• One notable and highly cited case is that of a 40-year-old schoolteacher
(Glenn & Raine, 2014; Burns & Swerdlow, 2003).
• Otherwise healthy, he began to develop an interest in child pornography
and displayed a marked increase in sexually deviant behavior. He was soon
convicted of child molestation and sentenced to jail. The night before
entering prison he complained of severe headaches and was taken to the
emergency room where, following an MRI scan, it was revealed that he had
a right orbitofrontal tumor. The tumor was removed, his behavior returned
to normal and he was deemed safe to go home to his wife and
stepdaughter. Several months later the sexually charged behavior returned
and it was discovered that the tumor had regrown – it was again removed,
and his behavior has remained as it was before ever since.
• Pedophilic sex offenders are characterised by reduced GABA concentration
in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (Ristwo et al., 2018)
Brain Structure and Function
• The orbitofrontal cortex is one region that has been consistently associated with
antisocial or violent behavior, along with the anterior cingulate cortex and the
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – both also located in the frontal lobe.
• A meta-analysis of 43 imaging studies found that these three prefrontal structures
are significantly reduced both in size and function in antisocial individuals (Yang &
Raine, 2009).
• Further, a recent study investigating the difference in grey matter volume of
violent versus non-violent criminals found that those who have committed a
homicide have reduced grey matter in the regions of the brain associated with
emotional processing, behavioral control and social cognition. Including the MRI
scans of over 800 prisoners, the study found a significant difference in grey matter
volume in the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior temporal lobes in the perpetrators
of homicide (Sajous-Turner & Anderson, 2020).
• One study (Vilares et al. 2017), published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, has suggested that the key to identifying
criminal intent could also be found in brain scans. While the research is far
from courtroom ready, preliminary proof-of-principle results from their
machine learning-based neuroimaging study suggest it is possible to predict
with a high level of accuracy the mental state of someone while they
commit a crime.

• The research group analyzed the functional MRI (fMRI) brain scans of 40
people, taken as they were run through a criminal scenario of smuggling
contraband through security at an airport. In the simulated scenario, half
knew that they had contraband in their luggage while half knew that they
might, but were not certain. In the results they found distinctive brain
activity when the individual knew for sure they were carrying contraband –
but only when the scenario played out in one specific order. Later, machine
learning analysis of the data was able to correctly predict whether the
individual displayed criminal intent or was just taking a risk between 71 and
80% of the time.
fMRI – False Positives!
• That being said, what fMRI can actually tell us is a whole other
debate. As demonstrated by a group of researchers at Dartmouth
(NH, USA) and a dead salmon, the statistical methods used when
analyzing data from fMRI studies can result in a large amount of false
positives – enough to make a dead salmon appear to be thinking. A
study from researchers at Linköping University (Sweden) and the
University of Warwick (UK) found that the most widely used software
for fMRI analysis can give false-positive rates of up to 70% .
• With such a high risk of false-positive, can such a technique be
trusted in a courtroom where a false declaration of criminal intent
can lead to lifelong imprisonment?