“We are fortunate to present the world’s largest sample of its kind and the results are quite remarkable.” “This work represents more than 10 years of data collection across eight prisons in two states,” Kiehl said. The innovative study is a result of his longtime collaboration with University of New Mexico neuroscientist Kent Kiehl, who helps direct the nonprofit Mind Research Network. “That’s what you need to make computations, to process information-whether it’s emotional information that you use to feel empathy for someone else, or information that you use to control your behavior, to suppress your tendencies to react.”Ī pioneering scholar in the cognitive neuroscience of moral reasoning and social decision-making, Decety’s research has focused both on psychopathy and on childhood moral development. Harris Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago, noting differences in the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior temporal lobes of the brain. “More gray matter means more cells, neurons and glia,” said Jean Decety, the Irving B. Those reductions were especially apparent in regions of the brain associated with emotional processing, behavioral control and social cognition. The brains of murderers look different from those of people convicted of other crimes-differences that could be linked to how they process empathy and morality.Įxamining brain scans of more than 800 incarcerated men, new research co-authored by a leading University of Chicago neuroscientist found that individuals who had committed or attempted homicide had reduced gray matter when compared to those involved in other offenses.