The gender differences in the genetic of aggressive behavior

Abstract

In recent literature, there is an growing interest about the aggressive behavior’s genetics, with the specific aim of identify specific alterations of genes involved in dopaminergic and serotonergic systems. Given that aggressive behavior is regarded as an alteration of catecholaminergic system, a reduction in COMT and MAOA, the two major enzymes responsible for the catabolism of brain catecholamines, should indirectly increase these behaviors. While there is and there has been a substantial attention in males and neutral gender with regard to aggressive and/or antisocial behaviors, females have been a research group less considered, both due to social and cultural factors, and to the difficulty pointed out different forms of aggression, often minor and less urgent from the point of view of the response of the society. For this reason, only recently the importance of considering the women’s aggressiveness through a dynamic development due to a cumulative effect of risk and protective factors that occur over time as been understood. In this article, we stress the importance of including these genetic gender differences, in order to understand the phenomenon of violence, being in agreement with recent literature on these options, still to consider, especially with the hormonal hypothesis of testosterone/estrogen balance.