Affra Iftikhar

How can psychological therapy for criminals be improved in jails where there are high risk individuals for violent tendencies?

How are pleas of insanity evaluated in the court of law?

What should be the appropriate step in handling juvenile delinquency?

I read this amazing article about the neuroscience involved in the mind of a serial killer and it proposed this interesting theory of how two minds exist inside a serial killer. Read on more to find out: https://blog.oup.com/2021/04/what-can-neuroscience-tell-us-about-the-mind-of-a-serial-killer/#:~:text=One%20explanation%20for%20such%20cognitive,the%20most%20unspeakable%20and%20violent

How do poverty and poor living conditions correlate with the incidence of crime and violent tendencies? Can rehabilitative services for criminals focus on improving their living conditions?

This article explores the various symptoms of withdrawal from different drugs. Read on more to know how hard a withdrawal can be on the body: https://www.turnbridge.com/news-events/latest-articles/withdrawal-symptoms/

Why do we see religious extremism on such a rise? What factors are at play in triggering people to use religious sentiments for committing such violent acts?

If a person, during his/her therapy sessions, reveals his/her intent to harm someone or commit a crime, what protocol should be followed? Should the information be revealed to the concerned authorities?

In mental relapse, there is a war going on inside people’s minds. Part of them wants to use, but part of them doesn’t. As individuals go deeper into mental relapse, their cognitive resistance to relapse diminishes and their need for escape increases. These are some of the signs of mental relapse: 1) craving for drugs or alcohol 2) thinking about people, places, and things associated with past use 3) minimizing consequences of past use or glamorizing past use 4) bargaining 5) lying 6) thinking of schemes to better control using 7) looking for relapse opportunities 8) planning a relapse.

Marital abuse is a very common occurrence in almost all parts of the world. When does it become a case that has to be dealt with by a forensic psychologist?

The following article explores the relationship between grief and violence on verge of criminal behavior. Read to learn more: https://cycj.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Bereavement-and-EEI-1.pdf

It is a very commonly explored topic in medicine as to how an imbalance of various hormones can give rise to aggressive and violent behavior. Read this article to learn more: https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/the-biological-and-emotional-causes-of-aggression/

I recently came across an interesting article that relates the ethics of neuroimaging in explaining the working of the human brain in a criminal case. Read this article to learn more: https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/btn-2020-0171

Our most difficult problem in discussing consciousness, thoughts, memory, and learning is that we do not know the neural mechanisms of thought, and we know little about the mechanisms of memory. We know that the destruction of large portions of the cerebral cortex does not prevent a person from having thoughts, but it does reduce the depth of the thoughts and also the degree of awareness of the surroundings. Each thought certainly involves simultaneous signals in many portions of the cerebral cortex, thalamus, limbic system, and reticular formation of the brain stem. Some basic thoughts probably depend almost entirely on lower centers; the thought of pain is probably a good example because electrical stimulation of the human cortex seldom elicits anything more than mild pain, whereas stimulation of certain areas of the hypothalamus, amygdala, and mesencephalon can cause excruciating pain. Conversely, a type of thought pattern that does require large involvement of the cerebral cortex is that of vision, because the loss of the visual cortex causes complete inability to perceive visual form or color. We might formulate a provisional definition of thought in terms of neural activity as follows: A thought results from a “pattern” of stimulation of many parts of the nervous system at the same time, probably involving most importantly the cerebral cortex, thalamus, limbic system, and upper reticular formation of the brain stem. This theory is called the holistic theory of thoughts. The stimulated areas of the limbic system, thalamus, and reticular formation are believed to determine the general nature of the thought, giving it such qualities as pleasure, displeasure, pain, comfort, crude modalities of sensation, localization to gross areas of the body, and other general characteristics. However, specific stimulated areas of the cerebral cortex determine discrete characteristics of the thought, such as (1) specific localization of sensations on the surface of the body and objects in the fields of vision, (2) the feeling of the texture of silk, (3) visual recognition of the rectangular pattern of a concrete block wall, and (4) other individual characteristics that enter into one’s overall awareness of a particular instant. Consciousness can perhaps be described as our continuing stream of awareness of either our surroundings or our sequential thoughts.

This article explores an interesting aspect of crime that is its representation in TV

While there are many different sociological theories about crime, there are four primary perspectives about deviance: Structural Functionalism, Social Strain Typology, Conflict Theory, and Labeling Theory. Read this article to know more.

I recently came across a very interesting article that relates genetic abnormalities to criminal behavior. Learn more about it in this article https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi263

Psychological autopsy is defined as a psychological profile to determine the mental state of someone who is already deceased. There are many reasons why a psychological profile may be conducted, with the most common one being to determine the cause or nature of death, whether it be by natural causes, suicide, homicide, or an accident. The psychological autopsy plays a vital role in reconstructing the psychical state of the victim's mind which in turn helps us to resolve whether his or her death was suicide, homicide, or accidental. PA is most useful when the evidence of the deceased person's intention is ambiguous

I recently came across a very interesting article that mentioned some of the most famous and influential forensic psychologists of all time. They are as follows: Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1920) Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916) Harry Hollingworth (1880 – 1956) William Marston (1893 – 1947) Here's the link to the article to read up more on their works:

Criminal profiling techniques are based on 4 main approaches – geographical, clinical profiling, investigative psychology and typological. The geographical approach – This approach is used to deduce links between crimes and suggestions about the place where offenders stay and work.