People who are able to commit crimes called as white-collar ones because they involve credit card fraud and software hacking have different brain structures that are almost quite capable of superior business executive skills.

This was the outcome of a study made by the University of Pennsylvania, which compared the brain structures of people convicted with "white-collar" crimes and those who are not.

Psychological tests on white-collar criminals also showed that they were better at making decisions in the kind of "higher executive" brain functions associated with being good at business, researchers said.

"They have better executive functions. They have better executive skills, such as planning, regulation and control. So in a sense these people have all the advantages we really want in successful business people," said Adrian Raine, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania

The study found that white-collar criminals had more grey matter than a comparable group of non-criminals, suggesting there may be a biological basis for this kind of criminal behaviour, Raine added.

"This study is agnostic in terms of the cause of these differences. All it is saying is there are some differences," he noted.

"The study used magnetic resonance brain scanners to compare 21 convicted white-collar criminals with a similar group of people of the same age and social class who had not committed such crimes. He emphasised the study did not show that difference in brain structure was the cause of someone turning to crime, only that there was an association that might indicate a cause and effect, "a related report on the New Zealand Herald indicated.