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Down And Dirty Lombroso’s Born to Crime, the Morphoanthropology and the Ignored Human Neurophysiology: A Critical Review on a Historical Context

Domenico Chirchiglia

Lombroso's theories, in 1800s, gave a strong shock in the international scientific community, regarding the correlation between the human morphology and its tendency to crime. They were followed, especially out of the Europe, and still are being discussed. But, in that century, they were enriched researches on human neurophysiology, which then would be further down to our time and that they denied sharply the Lombroso concepts. In short, the ignored neurophysiology, to the detriment of hypothesis which theorized the tendency to crime as an expression of the physical features of the individual, the whole body, from the face, limbs, ears, the shape of the skull. In this review, are made some critical remarks about Lombroso concepts, on 'atavism, the people considered inferior on the basis of their physical appearance, in other words what was called morphoanthropology. At the same time, this work emphasizes instead the 'importance of neurophysiological aspects of' individual tending to crime, that are the basis of abnormal acts against the society 'and that are related to the dysfunction of certain brain areas, such as the frontal cortex and limbic cortex, under the influence of genotype and environmental factors.