Psychopath and Narcissist Survivors Support Group

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090605-maoa

Can the Narcissist become Violent?

http://samvak.tripod.com/9.html

Adolescent Narcissist

http://samvak.tripod.com/case01.html

Serial and Mass Killers as a Cultural Construct

http://samvak.tripod.com/serialkillers.html

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“Warrior gene” reported rife among young thugs

June 5, 2009
Courtesy Florida State University
and World Science staff

Boys car­ry­ing a par­tic­u­lar var­i­ant of a gene are un­usu­ally likely to join gangs—and to be among their most vi­o­lent, highly armed mem­bers, a new study has found. The re­search linked a gene called mono­amine ox­i­dase A, or MAOA, to gangs and guns.

The find­ings apply only to ma­les; girls with the same ge­net­ic pe­cu­liar­ity seem re­sist­ant to its po­ten­tially vi­o­lent ef­fects, the re­search­ers said.

Kev­in M. Bea­ver of the Flor­i­da State Un­ivers­ity’s Col­lege of Crim­i­nol­o­gy and Crim­i­nal Jus­tice, who led the stu­dy, said it probes the in­ter­play of ge­net­ics and en­vi­ron­ment that pro­duces some of so­ci­ety’s most se­ri­ous of­fend­ers.

“While gangs typ­ic­ally have been re­garded as a so­ci­o­lo­g­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, our in­ves­ti­ga­t­ion shows that var­i­ants of a spe­cif­ic MAOA gene, known as a ‘low-acti­vity 3-repeat al­lele,’ play a sig­nif­i­cant role,” said Bea­ver.

“Pre­vi­ous re­search has linked low-acti­vity MAOA var­i­ants to a wide range of an­ti­so­cial, even vi­o­lent, be­hav­ior, but our study con­firms that these var­i­ants can pre­dict gang mem­bership,” he said. “More­over, we found that var­i­ants of this gene could dis­tin­guish gang mem­bers who were markedly more likely to be­have vi­o­lently and use weapons” than oth­er mem­bers.

The gene var­i­ant has some­times been called the “war­rior gene,” said Bea­ver.

The gene has been found to af­fect lev­els of mood- and be­hav­ior-re­lat­ed sig­nal­ing mo­le­cules in the brain, called neu­ro­trans­mitters, such as dopamine and ser­o­to­nin. Vari­ants re­lat­ed to vi­o­lence have been found to be he­red­i­tary, re­search­ers said. Some pre­vi­ous stud­ies have found the “war­rior gene” to be more prev­a­lent in cul­tures typ­i­fied by war­fare and ag­gres­sion.

“What’s in­ter­est­ing about the MAOA gene is its loca­t­ion on the X-chro­mo­some,” Bea­ver said. “As a re­sult, ma­les, who have one X-chro­mo­some and one Y-chro­mo­some, pos­sess only one copy of this gene, while fe­ma­les, who have two X-chro­mo­somes, car­ry two. Thus, if a male has an al­lele [var­i­ant] for the MAOA gene that is linked to vi­o­lence, there is­n’t anoth­er copy to coun­ter­act it. Fema­les, in con­trast, have two cop­ies, so even if they have one risk al­lele, they have anoth­er that could com­pen­sate for it.”

The study ex­am­ined DNA da­ta and lifestyle in­forma­t­ion drawn from more than 2,500 re­spon­dents to the U.S. Na­tional Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study of Ad­o­les­cent Health, a Uni­versity of North Caro­lina sur­vey of U.S. adol­es­cents in grades 7-12 dur­ing the 1994-95 school year. Bea­ver and col­leagues de­tailed their find­ings in a pa­per to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing is­sue of the jour­nal Com­pre­hen­sive Psy­chi­a­try.