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A brain primed for violence?

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Richard Wilson

Tuesday 28 March 2006

Anyone who has been on the Team Teach course with me will know that I am fascinated by all aspects of aggression, both the often neglected positive and over stated negative aspects. After all, if we were not pre-diposed to aggression as a species we would have been a failed evolutionary experiment and a footnote to the ecological history of this planet and being "assertive" is just PC aggression. A good example was an amusing interview with John Hughes, the Falkirk manager on Saturday after the grumpy match with Hearts. The topic was verbal provocation on field, particularly Rudi Scacel's comments to the Falkirk players. Hughes comment, with his tongue only slightly in his cheek "I don't do verbals, I just go straight to physicals, let's go outside and start swinging", great stuff, and very amusing in that context. We beat you anyway Hughsey! Na, Na!!

Later the same day I read an interesting article in The New Scientist by Helen Philips who was reporting on some genetic research carried out by Andreas Meyer-Lindberg from the US Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. It seems they have isolated a gene variant called MAOA which, when absent, has been linked to unusually aggressive behaviour in men. The control was explored in mice engineered to lack MAOA, an enzyme called monoamine oxidose-A, and they displayed unusual amounts of aggression. It turns out that there is a more common gene called MAOA-L that is present in many people and is a low-activity varient. A study in 2002 found that men who have MAOA-L and have been maltreated as children were more likely to exhibit antisocial behaviour than those with the normal gene. The site of the problem seems to be an underactive amygdala, which is the locus for emotions. Men affected by this do not have the level of control over their emotional response and have difficulty in inhibiting their reponses. The difficulty seem to be that the gene lies on the X chromosome, so men have only one copy. Women have two copies of the gene and have higher levels of MAOA and thus do not display the same tendencies. These differences in the brain structure happen in-utero and as always when considering the effects that genes have on behaviour there is the fact that these tend to happen in relation to other factors working together to provide a trigger. These could be environmental, stress, drug or social factors.

Even so, I think we all know of someone who has a short fuse or is pre-diposed to being a total grump at all turns.

If you want to find out more about how the brain works go to the instant expert page in the New Scientist, it's fascinating.

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