Violence and Aggression: The State of the Art

Abstract

The focus of this review will be on the neurobiology of violence and aggression in man. Violence, in this context, will be considered as individual acts of pathologically aggressive behavior; thus war, revolution, race riots, and gang warfare will be excluded. This discussion, then, will be on a smaller subtopic, as opposed to a more global aspect of violence that would include the extensive areas of its social, economic, cultural, and psychological determinants. Still further, this review will not deal with animal studies, not because of any deprecatory feeling regarding their scientific merit, but because of a personal bias that they may be irrelevant. After all of these exclusionary clauses, is there any residue? The answer to this question appears to be the currently hot issue for debate—the magnitude, importance, and treatability of disorders of the brain resulting in violent behavior.