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07.27.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction

Today's soundtrack is NAV: RECKLESS.

This evening, I'm reading the fourth chapter of Dean A. Haycock's Murderous Minds, "A Problem Just Behind the Forehead."

There are some genes associated with violence, antisocial behaviours, and reduced empathy. The presence of these genes does not always lead to psychopathy in an individual, but can predispose some people to those traits. Men are more likely to have these genetic variances, as they are linked to the X-chromosome. Murderers tend to have "inactivity in the prefrontal orbital cortex" (p. 76), which results in a reduced ability to make decisions; psychopaths share this trait, but psychopaths kill without emotion, while "impulsive or reactive murderers" (p. 77) kill because of their emotions and their reduced ability to make decisions.

The orbitofrontal cortex, part of the frontal lobes, serves to influence "a sense of ethics, morality, and social cooperation" (p. 81). If it is damaged or improperly developed while still in the womb, "[i]ts dysfunction can lead to impulsiveness and aggression" (p. 81). People without a functioning orbitofrontal cortex lack the ability to refrain from inappropriate behaviours and decisions. Interestingly, a lower-functioning orbitofrontal cortex also leads to a lowered ability to be trained through classical conditioning, showing us that "psychopaths don't do well when it comes to learning to control their reward-seeking behavior" (p. 86). This is not to say that psychopaths are unintelligent; as Haycock says, "[l]ike the rest of the population, psychopaths range widely in intelligence" (p. 84).

What causes these brain abnormalities? Haycock points to several possibilities: "stroke, head trauma, or genetics combined with a damaging environment[, ...] herpes simplex and rabies encephalitis, and organic brain diseases such as temporal lobe epilepsy and fronto-temporal dementia" (p. 88).

In 2004, a study was performed comparing two sets of psychopaths. One set, the "unsuccessful" set, had a history of trouble with the law. The other set did not. When comparing the brains of the first group and second group, researchers found that "psychopaths whose activities had landed them in prison had 22 percent less prefrontal gray matter than non-psychopaths" (p. 92); "successful" psychopaths did not have this abnormality. This may mean that some psychopaths, though they may not recognize the moral reasons for not acting on certain impulses, have the self-control to recognize the danger of pursuing certain actions - meaning that they may refrain from criminal activity altogether, or just plan it better so that they don't get caught.

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