Raine A, Buchsbaum M S, Stanley J, Lottenberg S, Abel L, Stoddard J
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles 90089-1061.
Biol Psychiatry. 1994 Sep 15;36(6):365-73. doi: 10.1016/0006-3223(94)91211-4.
This study tests the hypothesis that seriously violent offenders pleading not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial are characterized by prefrontal dysfunction. This hypothesis was tested in a group of 22 subjects accused of murder and 22 age-matched and gender-matched controls by measuring local cerebral uptake of glucose using positron emission tomography during the continuous performance task. Murderers had significantly lower glucose metabolism in both lateral and medial prefrontal cortex relative to controls. No group differences were observed for posterior frontal, temporal, and parietal glucose metabolism, indicating regional specificity for the prefrontal deficit. Group differences were not found to be a function of raised levels of left-handedness, schizophrenia, ethnic minority status, head injury, or motivation deficits in the murder group. These preliminary results suggest that deficits localized to the prefrontal cortex may be related to violence in a selected group of offenders, although further studies are needed to establish the generalizability of these findings to violent offenders in the community.
本研究检验了这样一个假设，即因精神错乱或无受审能力而不认罪的严重暴力罪犯具有前额叶功能障碍的特征。通过在持续操作任务期间使用正电子发射断层扫描测量局部脑葡萄糖摄取，对一组22名被控谋杀的受试者和22名年龄及性别匹配的对照组进行了该假设的检验。与对照组相比，杀人犯的外侧和内侧前额叶皮质的葡萄糖代谢显著降低。在后额叶、颞叶和顶叶的葡萄糖代谢方面未观察到组间差异，表明前额叶缺陷具有区域特异性。未发现组间差异是谋杀组中左撇子比例升高、精神分裂症、少数族裔身份、头部损伤或动机缺陷等因素造成的。这些初步结果表明，前额叶皮质局部的缺陷可能与特定一组罪犯的暴力行为有关，尽管需要进一步研究以确定这些发现对社区中暴力罪犯的普遍性。
