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Bullies may enjoy others’ pain
Nov. 7, 2008
Courtesy University of Chicago
and World Science staff
Unusually aggressive youth may enjoy inflicting pain, researchers at the University of Chicago have found in a study using brain scans.
Videos of people getting hurt were found to trigger flurries of activity in a brain area associated with reward in aggressive youth, the scientists said; other kids didn’t react that way. For aggressive adolescents,
seeing someone in pain triggered strong activation in a brain area called the ventral striatum,
which responds to pleasurable events, researchers said. (Image
courtesy Open University, U.K.)
The research shows some aggressive youths’ natural empathetic impulse may be disrupted, said the university’s Jean Decety, who led the research. “This work will help us better understand ways to work with juveniles inclined to aggression and violence,” he added.
The scientists compared adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression
to eight 16- to 18-year-old boys who had shown disruptive behavior,
such as starting a fight, using a weapon or stealing after confronting a victim.
Participants underwent brain scans while watching videos of people having their foot stepped on, having a heavy bowl fall on their hands, or the like. The scanning system was of a widely used type known as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which measures brain activity based on where blood is flowing.
Aggressive adolescents showed a “specific and very strong activation” in a brain area called the ventral striatum, known from previous studies to respond to pleasurable events, Decety said. Unlike the control group, he added, the more aggressive youth didn’t activate brain areas involved in self-control, called the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction.
The findings are reported in the current issue of the research journal Biological Psychology.
The more normal youth, Decety said, acted similarly to youth in a study released earlier this year, in which his group used scans to show 7- to 12-year-olds are naturally empathetic toward people in pain. The scans showed that when the children saw animations of someone get hurt, the same part of the brain that registered pain when they hurt became active upon seeing someone else hurt, he explained. When they saw someone intentionally hurt, the part of the brain associated with understanding social interaction and moral reasoning became active.
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Unusually aggressive youth may enjoy inflicting pain, researchers at the University of Chicago have found in a study using brain scans. Videos of people getting hurt were found to trigger flurries of activity in a brain area associated with reward in aggressive youth, the scientists said; other kids didn’t react that way. The research shows some aggressive youths’ natural empathetic impulse may be disrupted, said the university’s Jean Decety, who led the research. “This work will help us better understand ways to work with juveniles inclined to aggression and violence,” he added. The scientists compared eight 16- to 18-year-old boys who had shown disruptive behavior—such as starting a fight, using a weapon or stealing after confronting a victim—to adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression. Participants underwent brain scans while watching videos of people having their foot stepped on, having a heavy bowl fall on their hands, or the like. The scanning system was of a widely used type known as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which measures brain activity based on where blood is flowing. Aggressive adolescents showed a “specific and very strong activation” in a brain area called the ventral striatum, known from previous studies to respond to pleasurable events, Decety said. Unlike the control group, he added, the more aggressive youth didn’t activate brain areas involved in self-control, called the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction. The findings are reported in the current issue of the research journal Biological Psychology. The more normal youth, Decety said, acted similarly to youth in a study released earlier this year, in which his group used scans to show 7- to 12-year-olds are naturally empathetic toward people in pain. The scans showed that when the children saw animations of someone get hurt, the same part of the brain that registered pain when they hurt became active upon seeing someone else hurt, he explained. When they saw someone intentionally hurt, the part of the brain associated with understanding social interaction and moral reasoning became active.