Prefrontal Aggression Analysis

The prefrontal cortex is located in the frontal lobe of the brain and can be subdivided into different regions such as the orbitofrontal cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These areas as a whole are responsible for decision making, controlling emotions and other key social skills, they are also important for dealing with executive functions such as reasoning and planning. Mitchell (2014) claims that ‘the prefrontal cortex represents the pinnacle of evolution as it handles some of the most advanced aspects of cognition’. Therefore dysfunction in this area can cause major changes to one’s social behaviour and personality. This leads on to the main argument within this essay, whether dysfunction to the prefrontal cortex causes …show more content…
Graftman et al, (1996) (as cited in Higgs, Cooper, Lee and Harris, 2015) studied Vietnam War veterans, all who had suffered damage to their ventral prefrontal cortex. They found that these men were more likely to display aggressive and violent behaviour, thus showing a link between damage in the prefrontal cortex and antisocial behaviour. However we must be careful when using these findings as these veterans have been through a violent experience and it could be this experience which is causing this tendency of behaviour rather than damage to their prefrontal …show more content…
Findings found significant prefrontal deficiencies either structurally or functionally in individuals showing antisocial behaviours. These behaviours were increased when the damage was specifically in the areas of the orbitofrontal cortex, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right anterior cingulate cortex which are all subdivisions of the prefrontal cortex. Hence this study shows support for the links between the cortex and social behaviour and also using a meta-analysis means we have a broader range of studies used and so an increased in the reliability of results. Furthermore there is research to support this study’s findings and therefore support the link between dysfunction and antisocial behaviour. Yang, Glenn and Raine (2008) claim in their book that much research shows orbitofrontal impairments in antisocial individuals and also that this area is also important in inhibitory control, moral-decision making and reward and punishment processing, thus dysfunction in this area causes poor control over these behaviours. This therefore supports Yang and Raines research (2009) specifically relating to the different