Mad or bad: can we tackle aggression with brain stimulation?

It could come straight out of Stanley Kubrick's dystopian movie A Clockwork Orange: using direct brain stimulation to reduce aggressive behaviour. For PhD candidate Ruben Knehans, it's his daily business. Aside from the medical complexity, it raises all sorts of questions. Is it ethical, for example, to modify someone's behaviour? Can you justify imposing brain stimulation on convicts under criminal law? How to set rules and standards? Ruben tries to answer these questions in his PhD research at UM's Faculty of Law. Ruben studied law and psychology and followed up with a master's degree in forensics, criminology and criminal law at Maastricht University. In his PhD research, he combines his experiences from both worlds. "This makes the research varied and therefore continuously challenging." He is investigating whether it is possible to reduce aggressive behaviour with brain stimulation and, if so, how we can apply this in practice.