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Could Electrically Stimulating Criminals' Brains Prevent Crime? (newatlas.com)
future guy shares a report from New Atlas: A new study by a team of international researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Nanyang Technological University suggests that electrically stimulating the prefrontal cortex can reduce the desire to carry out violent antisocial acts by over 50 percent. The research, while undeniably compelling, raises a whole host of confronting ethical questions, not just over the feasibility of actually bringing this technology into our legal system, but whether we should?
The intriguing experiment took 81 healthy adults and split them into two groups. One group received transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for 20 minutes, while the other placebo group received just 30 seconds of current and then nothing for the remaining 19 minutes. Following the electrical stimulation all the participants were presented with two vignettes and asked to rate, from 0 to 10, how likely they would be to behave as the protagonist in the stories. One hypothetical scenario outlined a physical assault, while the other was about sexual assault. The results were fascinating, with participants receiving the tDCS reporting they would be between 47 and 70 percent less likely to carry out the violent acts compared to the blind placebo control.
The intriguing experiment took 81 healthy adults and split them into two groups. One group received transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for 20 minutes, while the other placebo group received just 30 seconds of current and then nothing for the remaining 19 minutes. Following the electrical stimulation all the participants were presented with two vignettes and asked to rate, from 0 to 10, how likely they would be to behave as the protagonist in the stories. One hypothetical scenario outlined a physical assault, while the other was about sexual assault. The results were fascinating, with participants receiving the tDCS reporting they would be between 47 and 70 percent less likely to carry out the violent acts compared to the blind placebo control.
I mean...?
Not sure how they can prove that the result is not that a 30-second shock and 19 mins of boredom didn't cause an uptick in criminal tendencies...
The higher the current the peaceful of the subjects. Over a certain range efectivity is 100%
In a number of Larry Niven sci-fi novels, there are people addicted to brain stimulation, known as "wireheads".
It's called "electric chair". Pump enough watts into the brain and they don't commit crimes anymore. Works like a charm
You just need to have 100% accuracy in detecting that they are indeed criminals and sufficiently strong current.
No more re-offending
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
As I recall, we tried the electroshock therapy thing a long time ago.
It worked, if you defined "worked" to include "turned them into vegetables". Somehow, I doubt that that's what TFA had in mind though....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The sample is too small and too biased. The right way to test is to take ALL the inmates convicted of violent crime in jail. Divide them into two groups, and give them transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) . Then watch their behavior. Once you prove definitively this things helps make peaceful society, we can extend this to the general population.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm pretty sure we established in the 40's and 50's an ice pick in that region would do the same thing.
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This is assuming that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain and I honestly think it is barking up the wrong tree. Criminality and the reasons people commit crimes are far more complex. Also American society has so many ways to get tripped up by the system that the average person actually commits 3 felonies a day without really knowing that they've done so and these are basically law abiding people. Harry Silvergate published a book on his study about this. The title of the book is Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.
I couldn't find anywhere in the citation that says or shows "Most violent crimes are committed under the influence..." It says that addicts are more likely to commit crimes than the general population, but you need to look at the base rate and most people are not addicts nor under the influence. The exception seems to be rape/assault on college campus: for sexual assault in which "90% of all cases" the relevant parties are intoxicated at the time; and for assault in general in where "95% of the time" one or the other party is intoxicated.
A problem in this report is that electrocuting anyone is likely to suppress their desire to do Anything. Good or bad. So while interesting subject the test is hardly scientific without a factor that shows their activity level, and probably more specifically with other people.
I bet one would find them reaching less for human interaction, other than maybe seeking safety.
Do a study where they electrically "stimulate" their reproductive organs. I'm curious what the results would be in that case.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Nah this actually stimulates the region rather than causing damage. We've been doing similar in other regions in both unsanctioned and sanctioned experiments to increase performance in battle and stuff like that for years. It makes sense given that the prefrontal cortex is basically what we use for long-term planning and conscious activities like that. We've known for a while that stress response is to shut this down so that you can deal with unrestrained effectiveness with whatever serious shit you're immediately encountering -angry predator or an enemy in territory etc.
This is how The Terminal Man started... I don't think we want that to actually come true.
I mean, didn't we do this to criminals ( and "insane" ) back in the early 1900s?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The problem is really that there's some socially accepted group think that says people have 'criminal urges' they cannot control. Rather than cognitive human beings that have made personal choices based on a lifetime of experiences.
It's almost as though society says 'these people are criminals because they are broken', rather than taking personal responsibility and understanding society puts a huge amount of emphasis on conflicting standards of behavior, conduct and goal setting.
tl;dr
People are inherently good, there's only so much bullshit a person can take.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
- Over half the subjects were woman ( They don't tend to carry out violent attacks).
- The study studies intent, not action ( Maybe females intend violent actions but don't actually carry them out which would skew the real life applications).
- Morally wrongful is a social construct which could mean the experiment actually reinforces existing social constructs (What about in a time of war when the construct is that the enemy are monsters, or gay people are evil, African Americans are thugs, and Arabs are terrorists?) .
I reserve the write to mangle english.
They should start with the worst criminals: bankers, lawyers and politicians.
dead man walking the green mile
While by no means an expert, I have done a little bit of work with folks doing research with tCDS as a learning/awareness enhancement technique so I'd just like to like to correct some misconceptions I see being thrown around here. All the following should also be taken with the caveat that I personally find applying any kind of psychoactive therapy to an unwilling subject or someone whose agency has been been restricted and is unable to freely give consent (e.g. prisoners) reprehensible.
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South Park the Movie has already shown us the danger of using electricity to curb aberrant behavior.
My father would tell a story about growing up in the 1930â(TM)s in a poor coal town when the electric chair was popular as a means of execution.
Whenever the switch was thrown, lights in the entire town dimmed. Over time, the frequency of these dimming reduced and not because of improved infrastructure.
So, yeah, large doses of electrical stimulation to the brains of offenders can reduce crime rates.
proper education, clean, lead free drinking water and decent paying jobs stops crime. The number of criminally insane people is minuscule. Crap like this is just an excuse not to do the hard work of solving root causes.
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I think it was called "The Green Mile".
... let's embed some electricity in opioids and stuff.
Many crimes are drug-related, and if that works, we can migrate that shit to meth, pot, Facebook, and other mind-altering substances.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Given that it is a proven fact that job insecurity and lack of a job directly relates to family violence, what would be the result of offering people JOBS that paid enough to live on (as opposed to ones that required you to work two or three jobs, 18 or more hours a day, just to get by)?
And libertarian idiots, how can you afford bootstraps, when the multinationals undercut your businesses and drive you under (can you say Walmart)?
But if you give a convicted criminal the choice between "Wear this estim hat" or "go to jail for 10 years", you're not violating their right to bodily integrity, are you?
Having such a choice would mean more severe sentencing in order to coerce people to wear the hat.
How long until this becomes something that is court ordered..?
-Myke
You can even do it at home!
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
I can't download the full PDF of the study, but there are at least 2 things missing from the description in the news.
First, their results are based on a verbal report of what a person says he/she would do in a situation. This is completely different from what a person might actually do in real life.
Second, they haven't shown that the effect is specific to violent intent. Maybe the brain stimulation also reduces their (reported) desire to do anything active, like exercise, or eat cake, or go scuba diving. The prefrontal cortex has many functions.
Before you claim that a particular part of the brain is "for" any particular purpose, you have to pass a high bar.
There's no proof that this will make any lasting changes. It could be something like the effects of meditation - good for max. a couple of hours, but as soon as the thought patterns go back to their old ways the jig is up. Is the proposal that potential criminals would need to wear electrode headbands 24/7?
I recommend reading "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson (author of "The Men Who Stare at Goats", among others). There was a lot of success in the 60s and 70s(? if I recall correctly) with using psychedelic drugs along with group therapy to treat such conditions, but it turns out as soon as the inmates faced the outside world (once more not only without the drugs but without any compassionate support network), the old behavior patterns came back with a vengeance.
My takeaway is that someone diagnosed as a sociopath is not necessarily biologically predestined to be that way - their "different" brain activity is potentially as much a result of their thought processes as the other way around. Just as in the case of drug addicts (see Johanm Hari's book "Chasing the Scream"), there is plenty of evidence to suggest that social factors and destructive thought processes are the root cause and that treating criminals with compassion rather than the opposite is key to changing their thought patterns and thus their behavior.
Unfortunately policy makers and institutional psychiatrists by and large don't want to consider such viewpoints - they want a quick band-aid to the problem and a reason to keep the prison-industrial-complex chugging along, not to mention most people have been brainwashed to see criminals as "bad", animals who are hardly worthy of basic human rights.
google "Old Sparky"
Yes, now that we have DNA testing to confirm the guilt of rapists, molesters, and murderers, we need to double down on executions of dangerous scum.
It is barbaric and dangerous to let such live.
Yes, you are. That's not a free choice. There's extreme duress involved.
You may as well say someone chose to give someone a gift of their wallet, smartphone, jewelry, and car keys because they showed them a shiny knife.
In my estimation the lack of childhood vaccinations really became an issue due to compulsory public education. I'm fine with you not vaccinating your child, just don't send them to the same schools as the children in my family.
Here's another solution instead of imposing compulsory vaccinations, doing away with compulsory primary education. "But we can't allow children to go uneducated!!" I agree. However it is rare for someone attending a public school to get an education. Public schools don't get paid based on the quality of their education, they get paid on the number of students attending. When attending is required then they don't even care if the students show up. They'll get marked as present regardless to make the books look good.
Abolish public education. If parents want their children to learn they can send them to a private school, educate them at home, or whatever. If parents don't much care if their children get an education then requiring attendance in a public school only distracts from the students that are there to learn. We'd be better off, as a whole, if these children weren't in school. I know that's harsh but I'm not responsible for your children, you are. If you can't come up with the funds to feed and educate your own children then it may be best if they were removed from you and adopted out to someone willing to take on that burden.
If you don't want your child vaccinated then you should be free to not send them to a school were vaccinations are required. Go set up your own school. I'm willing to let Darwinian selection run its course if it means my family don't have to suffer because of your poor choices.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I think I've seen this movie
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I wouldn't commit too many crimes either if someone electrocuted me!
I tend to rant.
You crank the power up high enough.
"God! He smells like a pig roast! His entire head caught fire!"
"But he won't commit any more crimes now!"
"Why not just shoot him!"
"Because that would be inhumane..."
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Your kids are vaccinated. So why are you worried?
Because no vaccine is 100% effective. Even with modern vaccines, and a common practice of multiple doses, there is still a small chance it won't prevent an infection. When dealing with illnesses that can result in deafness, amputation, and death, then it seems prudent to have a herd immunity to reduce the risk of infection. Vaccines are as effective as they are because of how prevalent the vaccinations are in the whole population. Some dingbat that thinks vaccines can give someone autism does not have the right to share a classroom with myself or anyone I care about. We've seen the return of the spread of these diseases in places where parents haven't vaccinated children, even in children that had their vaccinations. It's also a problem in places with a high population of people with "lost papers", to put it euphemistically.
Also there are plenty of totally valid reasons why somebody may chose not to vaccinate their kids.
I agree that people have valid reasons for not vaccinating, and I'm not talking about them. These people will often know that they are at risk and therefore rely on herd immunity for their safety, as well as other precautions one might take.
People should have the right to ignore popular trends for whatever reason (even ignorant reasons).
Sure, I'm fine with that. Just don't expect me to attend a university that has had outbreaks of meningitis or mumps because a bunch of idiots can't be bothered with getting a $150 vaccine along with buying their $150 statistics text book, $80 calculus textbook, $1500 laptop, and whatever else they spend on top of the fees and tuition to attend university. Those shots in the arm are not cheap but that is the cost of going to school. If they don't want to get the vaccines then they can go to a school that does not require them. I'll just expect that the place will be under quarantine in a few years once there's thousands of students packed buttcheek to buttcheek in a lecture hall for several hours, week after week.
Even if I'm in that lecture hall, and I got all my shots, but no one else did then I'm still at considerable risk of getting sick. Maybe I don't catch meningitis but I'm still in a room with people with compromised immune systems that might carry something that tags along with something more serious.
Even with vaccines being quite commonplace I'll still hear about someone getting sick from something. I'll read reminders of getting a "booster" when this happens because now everyone on campus has an increased risk.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No one is complaining about people with identified specific medical risks avoiding the vaccines. That is a red herring.
In fact, it is because of such people that it is very important for almost all of us to get vaccinated. There are a few people for whom vaccinations are too risky. There are a few people for whom the vaccines just do not work. Getting vaccinated protects them.
From a purely self-centered selfish point of view, it is not necessarily a big win for the individual to get, say, a flu vaccine. But if it so happens that you have any family or friends you care about, the chance that you not getting sick multiplied by the number of people you may have avoiding passing the disease to is a very big win. You are not an island, especially if you have children.
Chicken pox vaccine did not seem so important to mandate because very very few school aged children die or get seriously ill from it. However mandatory chicken pox vaccinations have significantly decreased the overall mortality rate of 0-4 year olds. It is not necessarily about you, but about who you get sick after you catch something.
In the USA, it is not difficult to set up a homeschool and avoid vaccinations, although the details vary state to state. So, in fact, the reality you are proposing already exists, for those who choose to partake in your better world.
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Since we've already got a Gulag, might as well get some productive use out of it. I say toss these mad doctors behind this barbaric "research" into the Gulag and throw away the key.
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>> Could Electrically Stimulating Criminals' Brains Prevent Crime?
With enough amps it sure will prevent further crime.
Proved to work since 1890
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Could Electrically Stimulating Researchers' Brains Prevent Brain Damage in Others?
Requiem for the American Dream