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Electrical brain stimulation may help reduce violent crime in future – study
It could be a shocking way to treat future criminals. Scientists have found that a session of electrical brain stimulation can reduce people's intentions to commit assaults, and raise their moral awareness.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore explored the potential for brain stimulation to combat crime after noting that impairment in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex has been linked to violent acts.
They recruited 86 healthy adults and gave half of them 20 minutes of brain stimulation before asking the whole group to read two hypothetical scenarios, one describing a physical assault, the other a sexual assault. Immediately afterwards, the participants were asked to rate the likelihood that they might behave as the protagonist had in the stories.
For those who had their brains zapped, the expressed likelihood of carrying out the physical and sexual assaults was 47% and 70% lower respectively than those who did not have brain stimulation. In the first scenario, Chris smashes a bottle over Joe's head for chatting up his girlfriend, and in the second, a night of intimate foreplay leads to date rape.
[...] Using a procedure called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, [Prof. Olivia] Choy and her colleagues Adrian Raine and Roy Hamilton at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a 2 milliAmp current to the prefrontal cortex of volunteers to boost the region's activity.
Stimulation of the Prefrontal Cortex Reduces Intentions to Commit Aggression: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Stratified, Parallel-Group Trial (DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3317-17.2018) (DX)
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:07AM
They missed an obvious placebo problem where the victims didn't get tested for non-violent passivity. Like how would you like to go for a nice jog?
Surely, a twelve pack of beer would mellow out most people making them less likely to commit an assault, I mean, I'm pretty chill, but also generally make them more passive into not wanting to do much of anything other than maybe watch TV or scroll social media endlessly or shitpost on SN all evening.
I'm just saying a general tranquilizing paralytic effect might be whats going on, not a specific behavior.