No, I'm not a professional. But I heavily considered a degree in neuroscience but the college I was attending didn't offer a degree program for it. I read a lot about the subject though so I'm really not going on a "gut instinct" it's a pretty educated guess.
You can't claim be educated by a course you didn't take.
Planning to murder another human being suggests no empathy or regard for another human life which is a sign of sociopathy.
Relevanting: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-reveals-most-children-unrepentant-sociop,2870/
Social behaviour is learnt. It is therefore unfair to punish those who have not finished learning.
Also sociopathy isn't a crime in itself.
I have taken several courses on the psychology aspect of neuroscience, I never took any labs though. And I still read up on neuroscience enough to feel confident to say this is more than a gut instinct. People who don't feel remorse is a huge indicator and as she herself said, she feels no remorse for what she has done.
hahaha Onion. It's true that very young children are governed by only id and ego which makes them pretty selfish, reckless, and sometimes violent. The super-ego develops around the age of 5, which is our morality and ethics. These girls were 12 and had possibly already reached the onset of puberty.
And I never said the disorder was a crime. But if she's already violent as well that is a bad sign. However, there are a lot of sociopaths out there who are capable of following the law and have never been violent.
Plus, lack of empathy does not always mean someone is a psychopath. At this stage in a child's development it would be very easy to misdiagnose and attributive her lack of empathy as sociopathic. She could easily have asperger's syndrome or some other mild form of autism.
That could be a possibility. But it doesn't really matter. She planned to kill one of her friends for months. Regardless of her mental state, the severity of her crime must be taken into account.
It'll be interesting to watch how the trial goes and to see what her psych evaluation reveals.