You should be a psychopath

The article that I chose to write about talks about how there is probably a hormone imbalance, more specifically talking about the hormone oxytocin released from the posterior pituary gland, present in the brains of a large portion of psychopaths. Oxytocin is thought to play a critical role in establishing bonds and trust between individuals and is actually a hormone that is released during child labor by the mother. Besides promoting the contractions needed during child birth, oxytocin is thought to play a vital role in the first couple of moments when the child is born between the mother and the newborn by creating a bond between the two.

According to the article, in a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience there were reported notable changes in the form of impairments between the VTA prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for regulating emotions and threats among other things, and the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional processing between inmates who committed similar crimes but where diagnosed as being psychopaths or not. This suggests that psychopath’s brains are anatomically different and that these anatomical differences may in part be responsible for their callous behaviors by not allowing their brains to communicate in the same manner as the brains of “normal” people.

A hormone imbalance would seem to suggest that there is a structural difference between the brains of “normal” people and those that have been diagnosed as psychopaths and this is what James Fallon seems to suggest in his book. Like the article, Fallon suggests that there is a link between form and function. Fallon has conducted work using PET scans that have showed that psychopaths have less activity in certain brain areas that are correlated with empathy and trust. While there is not a lot of information known about how or why the brains of psychopaths react differently to someone experiencing pain or being hurt, the PET scans suggest that there is underlying changes at the neuroanatomical level.

While there is still not a lot of data on this subject, current data suggests that the brains of psychopaths are anatomically different from “normal” brains and therefore function differently. In the future, as the article suggests, this type of data could be used as evidence in court rooms and therefore may influence the outcome of certain court cases. However, much more research needs to be done according to Fallon as the PET scan that was done on his brain showed similar results to the PET scan results on psychopath PET scans but yet he has a family and has never committed a violent crime. So while Fallon’s work might show that different parts of a psychopath’s brain is active during certain situations as compared to a “normal” persons brain, there is probably more than one factor that leads a psychopath to act in the way in which they do.   

Fallon, J. (2013). The Psychopath Inside. New York: Penguin Group.

Stix, G. (2012, December, 6). “Are Psychopaths “Brain Damaged?” Retrieved February 27, 2015, from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/12/06/are-psychopaths-like-hannibal-lecter-brain-damaged/