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Other biological research on violence, rather than focusing on hormones and neurotransmitters, has examined brain function by looking at things such as lesions in the brain caused by injuries, tumors, and other kinds of trauma to the head. This avenue of research was spurred by the University of Texas tower shooter, Charles J. Whitman, who in 1966 killed 14 people and wounded 32 others before being gunned down by police himself. His autopsy revealed that he had a glioblastoma tumor growing in his brain. A commission formed to find out why Whitman perpetrated this crime concluded that the tumor could have contributed to his decision to commit this mass murder. Although not everyone agrees with this assessment, it nevertheless helped spark interest in brain lesions and trauma to help explain some violent offending.
Antisocial and violent individuals have been subjected to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which relies on magnetic fields to view the tissue of the brain, and positron emission tomography (PET), a nuclear imaging technique that creates 3-D images of the brain. These studies have revealed that violent offenders, especially impulsively aggressive individuals, often have brain dysfunctions that are believed to have played a role in predisposing some of them to violent behavior. One study using electroencephalographic (EEG) brain scans found that those who showed a long-term pattern of violent behavior were three times more likely (65%) to have abnormalities in the EEG readings than those who were rarely violent. In a similar vein, a study of Danish men, English schoolboys, and California death row inmates concluded that brain trauma was an important element in producing violent behavior.36 The difficulty with this kind of research, however, is deciding whether the lesions caused violent behavior or whether violence caused the lesions. It’s not unreasonable to expect that someone prone to violence is also more likely to sustain head injuries as the result of violent encounters. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to establish the appropriate time order between these two variables. It’s the old chicken-versus-the-egg question as to which came first.
One of the most recent brain injuries to be linked with violence is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by an abnormal accumulation of tau protein in the brain. As the name suggests, CTE is caused by repeated head traumas and can cause brain cell death, cognitive deficits such as memory loss, and dementia. Unfortunately, CTE can only be diagnosed after death, when slices of the brain can be examined.
Recent attention has been given to CTE largely because a number of autopsies of high-profile athletes from the National Football League (NFL) revealed these serious brain injuries. The story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who uncovered the truth about brain damage in NFL players, was dramatized in the movie Concussion, which was released in 2015. Several of the athletes diagnosed with CTE post-mortem committed suicide, including Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end who killed himself while serving time in prison for murder. These cases have led to speculation about the relationship between CTE and violent behavior. However, just because a few people whose brains showed signs of CTE engaged in violence does not mean that CTE caused the violence. In fact, after Hernandez was convicted of murder, journalists uncovered that he had engaged in several violent acts before his NFL career, including punching a bouncer at a bar so hard in the head that it broke the bouncer’s eardrum.
