Neurobiology of Aggression in Children

This chapter reviews neurobiological risk factors for aggression in children. It begins by considering two general positions that have received considerable attention with respect to aggression in children: the frontal lobe and fear dysfunction positions. It then considers a fundamental difficulty with these types of general account of aggression in children-that they implicitly assume all aggression is mediated by the same neural architecture. It argues that a distinction must be made between reactive and instrumental aggression. The neurobiological risk factors for reactive and instrumental aggression are discussed.