"Brain responses to everyday rewards and punishments gradually guide most youngsters' decisions to conform with society's rules. However, when these seriously troubled kids experience rewards and punishments, and make decisions, their brains apparently malfunction," said Thomas Crowley, lead author on the study.
All particpants played a computerized risk-taking game that repeatedly presented a choice between a cautious and a risky behavior. The scientists examined brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as the boys decided to press right or left, and then as they experienced wins or losses after presses.
During decision-making, antisocial boys had significantly less brain activity than normals in particular decision-making areas.
As predicted by others not associated with the study, the antisocial boys also had dysphoria, a chronic sad-anxious state, with "reward insensitivity"; in the game their brains responded less than the comparison boys' brains to wins. They also had "punishment hypersensitivity," with greater brain response to losses than comparison boys.
Interestingly, the number of 'risky' decisions was similar in the two groups. The scientists speculate that this occurred because the game forced the boys to deliberate for several seconds before pressing either button.
It is interesting how they found different brain activity when comparing control to the antisocial boys, this does seem to indicate a fundimental difference between the two groups. But in terms of decision making, both groups made similar decisions.
Does this really suggest a genetic difference for decision making?
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Thursday 30 September 2010
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This is our first attempt to join the exciting world of blogging and bring to you all the fresh and hot news about the world of psychology and, of course, about your favourite training company. This is our new enterprise and we are finding our way in this mysterious world of blogging cautiously (but surely...) :-)
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We are hoping to move our popular SDS Delegate Debate into this blogging format in the future and looking forward to lively discussions here with you. We are planning to start with publishing already existing SDS Delegate Debates — with comments received from you. Then we'll move to the current news as well as will run new delegate debates there.
Feel free to leave comments to any of the posts — whether they are old debates, the news or new debates. As you can guess — every blogger loves his readers and LIVES for the comments. :-) We are just the same. You don’t need to register in order to be able to comment. You can leave your feedback as “Anonymous”, however, may we ask you to sign you name (or nick) at the end of your comment (even if you are commenting without logging in) so that we know how to address you.
Another useful tool that SDS Blog provides us with is availability of Polls that enable us to find out your views about various subjects. Polls are located on the left panel of the page and updated regularly. Please feel free to vote. You can see the results of each poll by clicking the button "Results".
If you wish to register — nothing can be easier — you just open a Google account — most of you, surely, already use one.
Your comments are read by SDS Consultants regularly and — in many cases — replied to.
The blog is moderated — mainly to protect you and other readers from spam and irrelevant comments.
All posts are tagged — hopefully it'll help you to find your way around there.
Wish us luck and please join the list of our followers.
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