Violent Behavior and the Brain :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Violent Behavior and the Brain - Do we know it all?The DMZ, which runs through Central Vietnam is a place where undisputed fury was unleashed for over a decade in the late mid-sixties and early seventies. During the year that I worked in Vietnam, I often returned to this function to watch the American Veterans, who would stand at the top of Marble Mountain, withered, with trifling stares appear towards the stretch of beach known only to the Americans as China. It was thick to retrieve the sharp contrast that must have seemed all as well apparent to them as the sounds of war loomed in their memories and the calm ocean stretched out before them now so serenely. It was then that I first started to see to it what causes man to become so enraged as to commit atrocities of the mind, body and soul. Violence - pure and simple, is intrinsic to humanity. It almost goes unnoticed as a way of livelihood in many communities. Drive through jointure Philadelphia on a spring afternoon and witness what appears to be life disappearing, receding under the concrete and graffiti. Look closer and witness the smoke holes in the walls of homes and cars. Still, there are other communities, such as trade union Brooklyn, where the rate of crime has been diminishing for the past twenty-five years. It seems, in fact, that furious crime does not behave as predicted. Social scientists have begun to rede that, in fact, violent crime requirements to be viewed much want an infectious disease. Simultaneously, neurobiologists have developed intricate research models and techniques to examine whether or not there are biological triggers that cause individuals to act violently. What if strength were to be truly considered an epidemic - one with BOTH neurological and sociological explanations? Being a public health practitioner and activist, I am inclined to champion the cause of social scientists and the role that society, economy, and politics merriment in the make-up of a violen t individual. What is the environment that allows an epidemic of violence to overtake a community and how does it initiate in the individual? Epidemiologists consider an epidemic to reach its tipping point when it turns into a public health crisis. As Malcolm Gladwell notes in his article, The Tipping Point, Every epidemic has its tipping point, and to fight an epidemic you need to understand what that point is. What then, is the tipping point for an individual who is motivated to act violently?