Department of Education, Psychology and Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy.
J Forensic Sci. 2022 Jul;67(4):1593-1606. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.15040. Epub 2022 Mar 31.
Containing aggressive behavior is an ongoing challenge in modern society. Aggressiveness is a multi-level construct that can be driven by emotions (reactive aggression) or can be "cold-blooded" and goal-directed (proactive). Aggressive behavior could arise because of a misjudgment of others' intentions or can follow frontal brain lesions leading to a reduction of impulse control and emotion regulation. In the last few years, interventional and basic research studies adopting Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation (NIBS) have significantly risen. Those techniques have been used both in healthy people, to better understand the role of certain brain regions in psychological processes, and in aggressive subjects to improve their symptoms. From an overview of the literature, focusing on the paper that uses transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to reduce aggressiveness, it emerges that tDCS can (i) enhance facial emotion expression recognition, (ii) improve impulses control, and (iii) affect approach/withdrawal motivation. The current work shows the strengths and weaknesses of tDCS intervention on aggressive individuals, suggesting that this instrument could be adopted on violent people, and paves the way for intervention in some applied settings such as prison.
控制攻击行为是现代社会面临的持续挑战。攻击性是一个多层次的结构，可以由情绪驱动（反应性攻击），也可以是“冷血”和目标导向的（主动性攻击）。攻击行为可能是由于对他人意图的错误判断引起的，也可能是由于额叶脑损伤导致冲动控制和情绪调节能力下降引起的。在过去的几年中，采用非侵入性脑刺激（NIBS）的干预和基础研究显著增加。这些技术不仅在健康人群中使用，以更好地了解某些大脑区域在心理过程中的作用，而且在攻击性个体中使用，以改善他们的症状。从文献综述来看，重点关注使用经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）来降低攻击性的论文，tDCS 可以（i）增强面部表情识别，（ii）改善冲动控制，以及（iii）影响接近/回避动机。目前的工作显示了 tDCS 干预对攻击性个体的优势和劣势，表明该仪器可用于暴力人群，并为在某些应用环境（如监狱）中的干预铺平了道路。
