Prefrontal Dysfunction in Murderers Lacking Psychosocial Deficits

Abstract

(from the chapter) Describes a psychosocial deprivation scale in order to test the hypothesis that murderers lacking psychosocial deficits have the strongest degree of prefrontal dysfunction. 41 Ss who had pled either not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) or incompetent to stand trial (IST) for murder or attempted murder in the state of California and 41 age and sex matched controls acted as Ss. After being rated for degree of psychosocial deprivation, a brain imaging procedure was used to assess glucose levels in Ss' prefrontal regions. Non-deprived murderers had significantly lower values of right and left hemisphere glucose than the normal Ss, and also had significantly lower left hemisphere values than the deprived murders. Murderers with the deprivation had significantly lower right and left hemisphere relative glucose values than normals, but not the other murderer sub-group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).