I am a huge fan of series and documentaries about crimes, most especially of those really heinous and strange stories. I see these criminals on my TV screen--a couple who set their own house on fire to murder their children, a couple who picked up random girls and tortured them to death, and a serial killer who didn't have even the slightest compassion to at least spare a child-- and I wonder if their brains look different from those who have never committed any crime. Now, here's what I know:
Antisocial Personality Disorder
This personality disorder is a characterized by a long term pattern of violating the rights of others and having a lack of conscience. Therefore, a person with this disorder is impulsive, aggressive, and is most likely to have had committed a crime in the past or has a strong tendency to do it in the future.
Many criminals have this personality disorder--they have psychopathic traits and act drastically against the norms to the point that they look down on other people, think highly of themselves, hence exploiting these "weak" others for their own advantage. Most murderers are/were like this. Take Andrew Cunanan, the man responsible for the murder of Gianni Versace as an example--in American Crime Story 2, he is portrayed as this psychopath who was a prolific liar and an absolutely perfect model for the killer who had so much prejudice over the simple life and arrogance towards the people he didn't think were good enough. He even dreamed way too high and at least tried to reach those goals in extreme measures.
From that example, one can take away the fact that there is indeed another reality in every antisocial offender's mind--they are regarded as the most special and the greatest person in the world, thus the violence and aggression they inflict on others to maintain their self-assurance of that greatness and to even gain more power out of those people they use or manipulate as if way lower and less able than they are.
The Criminal's Brain
Researchers took MRI scans of antisocial offenders to see if there is anything odd in their brains, and here are the findings:
Alterations in the orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex regions
These regions are responsible for regulating emotions and handling aggression which implies that the criminal mind might have had a terrible history with primarily their family and other relationships that may have contributed to their failure to control their temper and deal with their overwhelming emotions like stress, jealousy, anger, etc. which are the usual reasons behind capital crimes.
Differences in the temporal pole
This area is involved in interpreting the motives of other people. In this case, this explains why many offenders convicted of murder fail to give a clear reason for their act and usually blame it on their victim--that they were provoked to do it or something--when almost always, the investigation shows not even a small proof for such reasoning.
Reduced volume in midline cortical areas
These areas are a part of processing self reflection, information about the self, and recognizing others' emotions. With these areas having reduced volumes, the brain isn't much able to have a sense of compassion towards others and is basically in suffering with the person's crisis on identity or on mental and emotional well-being.
