Clinical and electro-encephalographic studies of prisoners charged with murder.

During the past ten years a number of papers* have been published dealing with the relationship between antisocial behaviour and electro-encephalographic abnormality. The subjects of these enquiries have ranged in degree of behavioural instability from truants to aggressive recidivists in prison, and in ages from childhood to the late forties. With one exception (Gibbs and others, 1945), the results both in studies of children and of adults, suggest a significantly increased tendency for the electro-encephalographic records to be abnormal in subjects whose behaviour has brought them consistently into collision with society. The abnormalities noted are by no means specific, and their incidence ranges from 34 per cent. (Gibbs and others, 1942) to 82 per cent. (Hill and Watterson, 1942). Since 1942 the opportunity has been taken to record the electro-encephalogram of sixty-four prisoners facing charges of murder; at first the selection of these subjects was governed by the wishes of the prison authorities or of those responsible for the prisoner's defence; but in the past two years the principle has been extended so that the latter part of the present series of cases represents a consecutive unselected sample of prisoners on a capital charge.