Feb 14 (TNS): Understanding the neuroscience of drunken aggression might help to reduce alcohol-related crime. New research uses brain scans to investigate why people can become aggressive after they’ve had a few.
The new study was led by Thomas Denson, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and the results are now published in the journal Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. As Denson and colleagues write in their paper, inebriation is involved in around half of all violent crimes. Homicide, physical and sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse are only some of the crimes associated with heavy alcohol use.
However, combined with an aggressive predisposition, even just a drink or two can incite violence. And previous neuroscientific studies have attempted to explore the brain mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Most studies have hypothesized that changes in the brain’s prefrontal cortex one of the most highly developed areas of the brain, it coordinates decision-making, judgment, and emotional control, among other things may account for alcohol-induced aggression. However, imaging data was mostly insufficient. So, Denson and team set out to fill this gap in our understanding by placing 50 young men inside an MRI scanner to study what goes on in their brains after they’ve had a drink or two.
The 50 participants were divided into two groups one whose members received up to three vodka drinks, and one whose members received alcohol-free, or placebo, drinks. Inside the MRI scanner, the young men had to complete a modified version of the so-called Taylor Aggression Paradigm, which is a traditional tool that has been used for the past half a century to assess levels of aggression in a retaliatory scenario.
