Professor Anthony Beech has been invited to speak at the Open University Psychological Society conference at the University of Westminster on the subject of Understanding the Mechanisms of Sexual and Violent Offending: A Neurobiological Perspective. The conference will take place on Saturday 26th January 2013.

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Anthony Beech says: ‘The aim of the presentation is to investigate the contribution of forensic neuroscience to the understanding of the aetiology of criminal behaviours. In the first section of the talk I will consider how disturbances in the neurobiological processes through which prenatal and post-natal risk factors, and problematic upbringings, sometimes in combination with genetic factors, can potentiate the probability of offending. Next I will examine in some detail such risk factors in antisocial disorders, which account for the majority of offending, such as Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). Then, I will examine what effects of these risk factors have on critical areas of the brain, particularly the amygdala, the insular, the orbital prefrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex, and how problems in these areas may in part lead, in part, to violent and sexual offending.’