Brain - Psychopaths, C.I.A. Data Show 14-Year Project On Controlling Behavior

Y! Big Story: What the brain tells us By Vera H-C Chan 4/28/12

....Finding how to stop extreme behavior. Thanks to crime literature and serial killer movies, Americans are aware of many different "-paths": sociopath, psychopath, and antisocial personality disorder. What has been a raging debate is if one is doomed to that diagnosis and basically lifetime incarceration, or if there's a window of intervention. One researcher went on a roadtrip into the heart of darkness: Using a mobile MRI unit, a University of New Mexico associate professor of psychology took a snapshot of 2,000 inmate volunteers.

    He found that compared to the average offender, 60 percent of psychopaths re-offend within the next 200 days. Maximum-security juveniles showed a similar pattern: 68 percent of individuals who were at high risk for psychopathy re-offended.

    Using images of the brain, [Kent] Kiehl said he could predict psychopathy as well as one can with clinical error. (April 23, Duke (University) Research Blog)

Among preliminary findings, Kiehl zeroed in on the interaction with a gene (MAOA) and a "stressful" upbringing and that treatment like group therapy actually ends in "violent failure" among adults. For juveniles, intervention's a different story and can show a 50% reduction in violent recidivism.

    "We have a problem in the United States: We incarcerate a lot of people," he said. "We incarcerate more per capita than any other country. It's expensive—it costs $2.34 trillion per year, which is about the same as the annual estimate for all health care [in the country]." (April 23, Duke (University) Research Blog)
  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/y-big-story-brain-tells-us-000534638.html 

C.I.A. Data Show 14-Year Project On Controlling Human Behavior; Data From C.I.A. Show Project on Human Behavior

By NICHOLAS M. HORROCK Special to The New York Times July 21, 1977
WASHINGTON, July 20 The Central Intelligence Agency conducted a 14-year program to find ways to "control human behavior" through the use of chemical, biological and radiological material, according to agency documents made public today by John Marks, a freelance journalist....

Marks: "To be sure, drugs were a part of it, " he said, " but so were such other techniques as electric shock, radiation, ultrasonics, psychosurgery, psychology and incapacitating agents, all of which were referred to in documents I have received."....

According to Mr. Marks's documents and an earlier Senate investigation, the C.I.A. conducted secret medical experiments from 1949 through 1963 under the code names Bluebird, Artichoke, MK Ultra and MK Delta. The C.I.A. inspector general's report in 1963 described the program as the "research and development of chemical, biological and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior."
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60A1FFC3E59157493C3AB178CD85F438785F9