From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Oct 20 1999 - 06:25:42 MDT
"J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com> writes:
> >Yes, this might help. Cognitive therapy is being tested to treat
> >antisocial personality disorder (usually in prisons; otherwise the
> >patients are rather uncooperative). I'm not sure how well it works,
> >the medline abstracts I looked at had rather mixed results.
>
> NEW YORK (AP) - A key part of the brain's circuitry for learning
> moral and social rules lies right behind the forehead, a study
> suggests. Antisocial behavior might depend at least in part on
> malfunctions in this circuitry, researchers said.
Which study was this? I know there has been some studies of prison
inmates showing an unexpected large number of small lesions in the
frontal lobes of violent criminals. And of course, Antonio Damasio
makes a good case in _Descarte's Error_.
Even if there are only biological reasons for this (unlikely in
itself), it doesn't mean cognitive therapy is useless. After all, we
can reprogram our brains quite well around damage given enough help -
it just takes time.
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