What would you do if you found out you had the mind of a psychopath?

When it comes to mental illness, nothing seems to draw the public's interest quite like psychopathy. Cases like that of Ted Bundy tend to hold the public's attention whenever they arise, and from classic movies like M and Psycho to modern depictions such as Showtime's hit series Dexter there is no shortage of pop culture portrayals of psychopaths. People are fascinated by classic psychopathic traits, such as lack of empathy or fear and the ability to manipulate others, but how many consider what it would be like to find out that they were prone to these traits?

This is exactly what happened when Dr. James Fallon, a neuroscientist and professor at the University of California Irvine. Dr. Fallon was conducting research which involved taking PET scans, and found that his own scan showed a brain that was similar in structure to that of a psychopath. He found low activity in his own limbic system and orbital cortex, which is consistent with neuranatomical features related to psychopathy. In particular, diminished activity in the amygdala, an organ in the limbic system that is associated with coordinating fear response, is a hallmark of psychopathic brain structure. In addition, Dr. Fallon reports some distant genetic relationship with other known killers, citing cases from 1892 and 1672. In terms of his personality, Dr. Fallon admits that he recognizes well-known psychopathic traits in himself such as lack of empathy and low emotional response, saying, "When somebody gets mad at me, I never show it - they can't read it on my face... I never get even immediately, but four years down the road, I get them with revenge," and "I wouldn't want to marry me... I can be manipulative and I am always on the make."

In spite of all of these similarities, no one would think to call Dr. Fallon a psychopath from looking at his actions or attitudes. Besides being a professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Fallon is involved in charity work, stating that he has nothing but good intentions, and that all that he is missing is any kind of sentimentality towards it, saying "I don't have the sense of romance or love... It's not there." In speaking of his desires, he expresses a wish to help others, not hurt them.

So what has made the difference for Dr. Fallon? Why is he successful in his field and inclined to help others in spite of his condition, as opposed to living a lifestyle of impulsive behavior, unable to hold down a job, and desiring to harm people? He says that the answer lies in the environment of his upbringing. "I had just the happiest childhood growing up," he has related, and he believes that the care which he received from his family offset what he believes would have been "A lethal [genetic] combination."

Stories like this fly in the face of many people's conceptions of psychopaths as permanently afflicted, and utterly incapable of making moral decisions. As it turns out, researchers have been reassessing some of the broader generalizations that have been made about psychopaths since the discovery of psychopathy. For instance, Dr. Newman, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has challenged what is called the "low fear hypothesis," which postulates that an ability to form any fear response, resulting from lower amygdala activity, is predominately responsible for psychopathic activity. Evidence comes from the fact that when anticipating an electroshock, psychopaths typically don't express physiological changes which would be expected for someone who was afraid of the coming painful stimulus. What Dr. Newman believes is that it psychopaths actually have lower attentional resources, meaning that they frequently lack the ability to be afraid, but only when their minds are being taxed by other responsibilities. One experiment Dr. Newman has run to test his hypothesis is to perform the same electroshock study alongside display of other stimuli like red or green letters, but to sometimes ask the participants to try to determine what stimulus predicts the shock. When psychopaths are in this condition and made to pay attention to the aversive shock, they demonstrate the same fear response as anyone else. Because lack of fear of conditioning is believed to be the root of many psychopaths' actions which are considered antisocial or immoral, it stands to reason that guidance toward being able to cultivate a fear response, perhaps from a caring and attention-rich upbringing, could lead someone with the same brain structures as a psychopath to live a normal life, as is the case with Dr. Fallon.

Sources sited:

 James, SUSAN D. "Scientist Related to Killers Learns He Has a Psychopath's Brain." ABC News. ABC News Network, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. <http://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientist-related-killers-learns-psychopaths-brain/story?id=21029246>.