Using DBS to help psychopathy

While reading James Fallon’s book, The psychopath inside: A neuroscientist's personal journey into the dark side of the brain, many things made me stop and think about the impact our world has on one’s psyche. Fallon talked about the biological aspects such as genes and heredity that can influence one’s behavior and predispose them to becoming psychopathic. However, he also stated that even though one may be hard-wired with these traits and characteristics they don’t necessarily have to act upon them. There is more to a psychopath than just an abnormal brain scan, as James Fallon points out from his first hand evidence of his own scan.

            How ironic that while researching the minds of psychopaths Fallon, an expert neuroscientist, noticed his own mind took on the same resemblance. He was living proof that having a psychopath’s brain did not predetermine you to become a psychopath. A concrete scenario where nurture, the environment, overrode the nature of his genetic make up. In Fallon’s book he admitted that his own situation helped balance him out on the nature versus nurture scale, while he had previously been more focused on the biological aspect.

            Since Fallon was very accustomed to analyzing brain scans of various people he had a very good idea of what typical and atypical functioning looked like. He noticed that what was typical of a psychopath’s brain scan was irregularity or weakening in the amygdala and in the orbital/medial prefrontal cortex. These areas affect anger and fear with the amygdala, but also ethics and morality with the orbital/medial prefrontal cortex. Effects also lead to a lack of empathy for others. This can give psychologists a very good clue as to why and how psychopaths can commit such horrible crimes and not feel guilty for their actions. Fallon understood this well and was able to make a three-legged stool analogy including these specific brain abnormalities as one of the key components to psychopathology. His stool also included having high vulnerability genetic alleles and a history of abuse or neglect.

            It seems that these brain abnormalities also arise in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) such as soldiers returning from war. The article Could Deep-Brain Stimulation Fortify Soldiers’ Minds from the Scientific American explains this rising problem of PTSD for our veterans. It states that 20 percent of the veterans back from Afghanistan and Iraq are suffering from PTSD as stated in the 2008 RAND Corporation report. The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has developed a device that addresses neurological disorders such as PTSD. It involves deep brain stimulation (DBS), which can “functionally reduce the activity of the amygdala”.  This device is used by about 100,000 people today and has been proven to work in cases of PTSD, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and major depression. In addition, there is talk of DARPA making a DBS+ device that would “read and monitor the brain’s activities in real-time using neural recording” and “intervene in these activities in an automatic way through electrical stimulation.” If this device were created is it possible it could extend beyond the existing cases of PTSD patients and possibly benefit those suffering from psychopathy?

I think DARPA has created a very clever device that could potentially help regulate the brain circuitry allowing the psychopaths to think and behave more appropriately. It is interesting to hear what Fallon would say about the DBS and whether it could help the treatment of psychopathy. It is clear that the same brain regions that he mentions that have weakened activity are what the DBS regulates. This leads me to think that there could be more hope for the patients in psychiatric hospitals. Instead of being committed for life to be supervised, maybe these individuals could be welcomed back into the daily hustle and bustle of society. Maybe this device could help some psychopaths act more like James Fallon, who has similar brain activity to them yet is still very accomplished and progressive for society.

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

"Could Deep-Brain Stimulation Fortify Soldiers' Minds? | MIND Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network." Scientific American Global RSS. Web. 28 Feb. 2015. <http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/2014/09/04/could-deep-brain-stimulation-fortify-soldiers-minds/>.