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Hemisphere Function in Violent Offenders

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Biological Contributions to Crime Causation

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASID,volume 40))

Abstract

The notion that criminals suffer from an imbalance in the cerebral hemispheres was originally proposed by Lombroso (1874), and subsequently corroborated by Talbot (1898), Lamb (1903) and Lydston (1904). However, with the fall of phrenology this notion was abandoned, until it was recently revived by hypotheses linking violent behavior to left hemisphere dysfunction (see Nachshon, 1982, 1983). Originally these hypotheses were based on clinical and electrophysiological data pointing to left frontal and temporal lobe abnormalities among violent subjects (Falconer and Taylor, 1970; Lishman, 1966; Serafetinides, 1965; Taylor, 1969, 1972; Yeudall and Fromm-Auch, 1979; Yeudall and Wardell, 1978). For example, Serafetinides (1965) found overt physical aggressiveness in 36 out of 100 consecutively tested temporal lobe epileptics, most of whom had a left hemispheric focus.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

    Israel Nachshon

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  1. Israel Nachshon
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Brogden Hall, 1202 West Johnson Street, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706, USA

    Terrie E. Moffitt

  2. Social Science Research Institute, and Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Denney Research Building, Los Angeles, California, 90089-1111, USA

    Sarnoff A. Mednick

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© 1988 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht

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Nachshon, I. (1988). Hemisphere Function in Violent Offenders. In: Moffitt, T.E., Mednick, S.A. (eds) Biological Contributions to Crime Causation. NATO ASI Series, vol 40. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2768-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2768-1_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7744-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2768-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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