levels of seratonin in the brain) intake of a country and the homicide rates, an obviously aggressive marker.(10) Another chemical in the human machine that causes or has been related to has been the "anger hormone" adrenaline and its counterpart noradrenaline. This is inherent in the flight or fight reflex, in which fighting is usually prepared by a flush of adrenaline into the system, and anger/aggression are integral parts of it.(12) Stanley Hall found that anger has numerous different effects on the human body, depending on the person. Aggression can cause either an increase or a decrease in heart rate depending on the anger causing stimulus.(12) For example, a psychologist named Albert F. Ax found that his test subjects were experiencing the slowing of their hearts because they were concentrating too hard on the event supposed to turn them aggressive, in the case of his experiment a mugger.(12) Another study done by a man named Eron in 1987, showed that most children, who when described by their peers as having high levels of aggression, are three times as likely to have a criminal conviction by the age of 30 than those children who were rated as having high levels of pro-social behavior.(10) That study shows the apparent stability, or lack of change, in the behavior of people thereby fueling the genetic, or nature, side of the nature versus nurture war that is currently being fought. Epilepsy has also been affiliated with aggressive behavior or at least with outbursts of it. A very strong correlation has been made between the focus of epileptic discharges being in the temporal lobe of the brain and discharges of violent and aggressive behavior. (1) That condition can be helped by psychosurgery but is not used as common as possible because the biological age group who most is affected by this circumstance are juveniles or violent offenders who are not capable of giving unbiased, informed consent to irreversible procedures. Further...
