The aggressive brain: insights from neuroscience

Abstract

Aggression is a complex, multifaceted behavior often caused by numerous factors and expressed in innumerable ways. Like all behaviors, aggression represents the outcome of sets of biological and physiological processes emerging from the brain. Although this may seem obvious, discovering the specific neural circuits and neurophysiological processes responsible for engendering aggressive responses has proven anything but simple. The purpose of this review is to provide a brief overview of discoveries in both human cognitive neuroscience and animal behavioral neuroscience that have begun to shed light—literally in some cases—on the heretofore mysterious neural processes and connections responsible for producing aggressive behavioral responses.