(Credit: Getty Images )

Brain scans offer clues to extremist violence

New research uses brain scans to investigate how "sacred values" can motivate extremist violence.

Mandira Banerjee-Michigan • futurity
June 19, 2019 1 minSource

purple grainy shot of back of man's head

To gain insight into the psychology of radicalization and terrorist violence, researchers scanned the brains of men who support a terrorist organization associated with Al Qaeda.

Artis International, a group of academics and policymakers, conducted the research with funding from the Minerva Program and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research of the US Department of Defense, and from the BIAL Foundation. The study appears in Royal Society Open Science.

Here, Scott Atran, an adjunct research professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School and Institute for Social Research, details the findings and delves into the psychology of the respondents:

The post Brain scans offer clues to extremist violence appeared first on Futurity.


Share this article:

This article uses material from the Futurity article, and is licenced under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

Related Articles: