Neural Correlates of Criminal Behavior: Are Brain Alterations Located Within the Free Will Network?

Criminal behavior arises from the dynamic interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors. Neurobiological research has highlighted the role of the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and anterior cingulate cortex in impulse control, emotion regulation, and moral reasoning. However, the link between neural alterations and the capacity for voluntary action remains poorly understood. Recent lesion network mapping studies suggest that anatomically heterogeneous brain lesions can converge on a common “criminality network,” overlapping with regions involved in decision-making and free will. This thesis investigates whether structural and functional abnormalities associated with criminal behavior involve the same neural networks that underpin volition and moral responsibility. Resting-state fMRI data from healthy participants were used to identify regions functionally connected to lesion sites of seven patients whose brain injuries were temporally linked to criminal acts. Data acquisition took place at the IRCCS San Camillo Hospital in Venice using a 3T Philips Ingenia scanner. Preprocessing in CONN and SPM12 included realignment, normalization to MNI space, segmentation, smoothing, and denoising to remove physiological and motion-related noise. Seed-based connectivity analyses were conducted for 39 regions of interest, and group-level analyses employed a general linear model with cluster-level FDR correction (p-FDR < 0.05; voxel-level p < 0.001). Results revealed convergent functional connectivity patterns across patients despite anatomical heterogeneity, with positive connectivity in the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex, caudate, insula, temporal gyri, thalamus, and cerebellum, and negative connectivity in the precuneus. These findings suggest that diverse lesion sites disrupt a shared network supporting volition, agency, and inhibitory control. The study offers a neurobiological framework for understanding impaired volitional control in criminal populations, emphasizing that while brain lesions may increase the likelihood of antisocial behavior, they do not determine it, underscoring the probabilistic nature of neural influences on human conduct.