Aggression and the Brain Some researchers offer a biological explanation for aggression. They suggest that aggression occurs when people have trouble regulating their emotions. And, in fact, some of the brain patterns that researchers observe for aggression are similar to those that they observe for the regulation of emotion. The colored parts of the brain in this figure are involved in both emotion regulation and aggression. Psychologist Richard Davidson and his colleagues (2000) saw similar activity for both emotion regulation and aggression in parts of the prefrontal cortex (A) and the amygdala (B).