title: Differences in brain circuitry for appetitive and reactive aggression as revealed by realistic auditory scripts.
abstract: Aggressive behavior is thought to divide into two motivational elements: The first being a self-defensively motivated aggression against threat and a second, hedonically motivated "appetitive" aggression. Appetitive aggression is the less understood of the two, often only researched within abnormal psychology. Our approach is to understand it as a universal and adaptive response, and examine the functional neural activity of ordinary men (N = 50) presented with an imaginative listening task involving a murderer describing a kill. We manipulated motivational context in a between-subjects design to evoke appetitive or reactive aggression, against a neutral control, measuring activity with Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Results show differences in left frontal regions in delta (2-5 Hz) and alpha band (8-12 Hz) for aggressive conditions and right parietal delta activity differentiating appetitive and reactive aggression. These results validate the distinction of reward-driven appetitive aggression from reactive aggression in ordinary populations at the level of functional neural brain circuitry.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: James K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Moran
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Weierstall
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Elbert
keywords: aggression; magnetoencephalography; motivation; oscillatory brain activity; violence