New Delhi: Why do people turn violent and what makes them more inclined to kill other people? Nobody really knows the exact answers to these questions, not even the psychologists or the scientists!
In the aftermath of a mass shooting in the US, where a young gunman killed at least 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, we decode the scientific logic behind this violent pursuit of humans.
As per a 2014 study carried out by the University of Glasgow researchers, a combination of mental health issues from autism to head injuries with psychological trauma can result in violent crimes.
The study, published in the Journal of Violent and Aggressive Behaviour, identified a complex relationship between neurodevelopmental problems and psychosocial factors.
Also, in the 1990s, a research based on brain scans of 25 convicted members found that many of the killers had abnormalities in the front sections of the brain - the so-called frontal lobes.
According to this research, the frontal lobe is quite inactive in murderer, whereas in the normal person, it is one of the most highly active areas of the brain.
The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that controls important cognitive skills in humans, such as emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behavior.
However, researchers noted that brain deficiency alone is not enough to make a person violent as if a person is badly abused, there may be anger waiting to be released.
“And if the person also has frontal lobe deficiency, then you have a very dangerous combination of impulses and drives that cannot be easily controlled by the damaged frontal lobes,” said Dr Jonathan Pincus, a psychiatrist at Georgetown University in Washington.
Scientists have been trying to understand what exactly goes on in the brain of a serial killer even as violent crime rose sharply in recent years.
