Friday, February 27, 2015

Do we have different brains than killers?

Upon reading James Fallon’s book, The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain, I found his chapter on the brain of a killer to be quite interesting. Jim mentions that the neuroanatomy of psychopaths, murderers, and other criminals are not the same as normal humans. I thought this idea was fascinating, that these horrible people are different from us even in their brain anatomy. James did lots of research in this field, studying many scans of different individuals, both criminals and healthy people. He is an expert in the field of neuroanatomy and his experience makes him a good candidate to explain the linkage between differing neuroanatomy and its correlation with psychopathy.
From his research, James noticed that the brains of killers have a decrease in activity of the orbital cortex, and the area around the amygdala. In a healthy brain these areas prevent impulsivity and certain types of sudden behaviors. A decrease in activity would lead to a person becoming impulsive with lack of judgment. The most astonishing part about this was the fact that a few lawyers representing a murder mentioned this information to a judge which led him to reduce the killer’s sentence from the death penalty to life without parole.
Going through the news provider, The Guardian, I came across an interesting story titled “How to spot a murderer’s brain”. It describes a neurocriminologist, Adrian Raine, similar to James Fallon who studied brain scans of people with ADHD, PTSD and Alzheimer’s mixed with scans of healthy individuals to ensure a non-biased study. There are two types of neuroanatomists, clumpers and splitters. Splitters split the brain into many different parts, often naming parts by the scientist who discovered them. Meanwhile, clumpers like organizing the brain into fewer parts. James Fallon regarded himself as a splitter and based off of the news article, I would say Adrian is most like a clumper. 
Adrian used PET (positron emission tomography) to study his subjects, while James used and MRI scanner. They both used functional tests, meaning scans that would detect activity in certain parts of the brain. This is helpful because it can tell us the level of activity in certain areas of the brain which can provide us with more information that just size, shape and location of brain parts. Raine mentioned the idea of epigenetics affecting psychopathy often in the article. James study of the COMT enzyme, and its two different variations relates to this finding. The methionine version of the enzyme, rather than the valine version, is responsible for breaking down dopamine in the frontal lobe at a much faster rate because of its low melting point. This rapid breakdown of dopamine is linked with an individual being able to plan ahead and simulate future events, something psychopaths lack.
Raine and Fallon noted that psychopaths have damage to the front of the temporal lobe and the amygdala because these areas process emotions. They also found that areas responsible for anxiety and empathy are low function in killers so they don't feel regret or stress during their crimes. Raine predicts that brain scanning to gauge psychopathy in an individual could be in the near future. Although this seems quite far-fetched, the information James provides in his book greatly supports this idea as there is a strong correlation.

References
Adams, T. (2013, May 10). How to spot a murderer's brain. Retrieved February 28, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/12/how-to-spot-a-murderers-brain

Fallon, James H. The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. New York: Current, 2013. Print.


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