Children who Commit Homicides have Different Brain Structure

A new research shows that children who commit homicides have a different brain structure.

Specifically, these children have a lower level of grey matter in regions associated with emotional processing and impulse control.

Researchers said that the study could help explain why some teenagers are more likely to commit violence than others.

The study was conducted by researchers at The Mind Research Network (MRN) in Albuquerque. The team used advanced machine learning techniques to predict which brain scans belonged to juvenile offenders. The technique could tell which of the brain scans were of homicide perpetrators with 81 percent accuracy.

The study was conducted on 20 male adolescents who had committed a homicide. Their brain scans were compared with that of 135 who had committed other crimes. In addition, researchers also looked at brains of two other control groups. The subjects in the study were 12 to 18 years old.

Researchers found that children who committed homicide had lower levels of grey matter in the medial and lateral temporal lobes and the hippocampus and posterior insula, according to a news release.

Research has shown that sentencing a juvenile is difficult because teenagers' brains grow in parts and not as a whole. The regions of brain dealing with intelligence grow faster than the areas regulating emotions, which is why they have problems controlling impulsivity.

"As policymakers grapple with the high societal, human, and budgetary costs of violent crime and incarceration among young people, it is within the power of neuroscience to help understand the brain abnormalities involved," said Dr. Kent Kiehl of MRN, senior author of the study.

"Then we can create medicine and behavioral therapies to reduce the likelihood of these violent crimes, or in a perfect world, prevent these crimes from happening at all. It is my hope that these findings will lead to the ability to better understand at-risk kids before they commit homicide and put them on a different and productive path," said Kiehl in a news release.

The study is published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical.