More advances in the neural science field. This time round they say that damage to the prefrontal cortex can cause a person to loose their moral and social codes of conduct.
While the research focused mainly on criminals and such, think about the military uses of such information. By simply preselecting a group of babies, and doing whatever is needed to modify the prefontal cortex, they could have a bunch of military machines with no morals or qualms with slaughtering the enemy.
Of course, this could all backfire...

Inside the Mind of a Criminal

Until an iron bar came smashing through his skull one day in 1848, everyone who knew railroad worker Phineas Gage thought he was a swell guy.

But when a dynamite explosion caused a metal rod to slash through the region of his brain that governs social and moral reasoning, Gage`s personality took an ugly turn and never got better.

Gage had been a conscientious worker and a devoted family man before the accident. Soon afterwards, he became a drifter. He was impulsive and uninterested in work or family.

Though his intellect was unharmed and he remained aware of social and moral conventions, Gage found that he was unable to apply those standards to his daily life.

The Gage story would became a celebrated case in neurology, one that would ultimately lead modern scientists to confirm that damage to the prefrontal cortex can cause severe lapses in moral judgment and decision-making.

Now, researchers at the University of Iowa have found that damage to the prefrontal cortex early in life could be the reason behind antisocial behavior such as delinquency, irresponsibility, and criminal activity.

The Iowa team found that children who suffered damage to that region of their brains before the age of 16 months were unable to learn and follow social and moral codes of conduct through adulthood. "This area of the brain makes the link [for] how we develop our social and moral values. When this area is dysfunctional, you never form that link," he said.

The Iowa team, led by Dr. Antonio Damasio and Dr. Steven Anderson, investigated two patients who both suffered damage to their prefrontal cortex before the age of 16 months.

Though both children appeared to make excellent recoveries from their injuries, and both came from stable, middle-class homes with educated parents, they suffered from severely antisocial behavior later in life, resulting in criminal activities, behavioral problems, and physical abuse of others.

According to the study, which is published in the current issue of Nature Neuroscience, one 20-year-old patient was hit by a car when she was 15 months old. By the time she was three, her parents noticed that she was impervious to verbal or physical punishment. By age 14, she had been arrested multiple times for shoplifting, and was verbally and physically abusive to others.

By age 18, she had been in and out of treatment facilities, was unable to hold a job for any length of time, and was unresponsive to psychotropic medications. In the same year, she gave birth to a child and, according to the study, "never expressed guilt or remorse for her behavior…and her maternal behavior was marked by dangerous insensitivity to the infant`s needs."

The second patient, a 23-year-old male, had undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor at three months old, with excellent recovery. By adolescence, he was prone to "explosive outbursts of anger ... showed reckless financial behavior which resulted in large debts and engaged in poorly planned petty thievery." Like the first patient, he too fathered a child and showed no interest in parenting the baby.

In a battery of tests conducted in the study, both patients demonstrated normal intellectual ability, but were unable to engage in moral reasoning beyond the level of a ten-year-old. Both patients were unable to the grasp the rules of social behavior or follow them.

Patients like Phineas Gage, who had had suffered damage to their prefrontal cortex as adults, however, were cognizant of social and ethical standards of conduct, but were unable to apply them to moral dilemmas.

"Gage was a big part of our research," Bechara said. "It was the first case of its kind. When he survived the accident, his personality changed incredibly. We were inspired by the case. [We wanted to see] what happens if the damaged occurred early on."

Though the scientists focused their research on just two patients, Bechara said the findings were solid enough to make a case for the effects of early-onset damage to the prefrontal cortex. "Even if you have only a few cases, these findings are usually very robust. You can make inferences from them."

Though the findings are part of a preliminary study, Bechara is enthusiastic about its meaning for the study of the neurological basis for moral and social development.

Maybe one day antisocial behavior could be viewed like diabetes, where [patients] have a missing chemical, and you need to replace or replenish this chemical and then they can behave normally -- like schizophrenia, or any other psychiatric ailment that can be treated or handled."

"This is going to shed new light on the underlying basis of these abnormal behaviors," said assistant professor of neurology Antoine Bechara, who helped conduct the study. "It does not explain the cold-blooded killer, but it does explain a lot of antisocial behavior."

Though the research is still in its early stages, Bechara said that the origin of antisocial or criminal behavior could be linked to a dysfunction or biochemical abnormality present in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

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