Tag: functional magnetic resonance imaging
Study Suggests Agressive Teens Derive Pleasure from Bullying
by admin on Nov.08, 2008, under brain research
Brain scans of people with conduct disorder demonstrate heightened activity in the pleasure center of the brain when they were shown images of a person in pain. Image courtesy of University of Chicago
A recent study from the University of Chicago found that when aggressive teenage boys view a video clip of a person hurting someone else, the brain’s pleasure center, the ventral striatum, demonstrated heightened activity in functional MRI scans. When a less-aggressive teen viewed the same clip, the brain did not light up in the same way. Instead, the subjects with less-aggressive behavior exhibited stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex, which is center of the brain that is involved in self-regulation.
