Just as I was making this realization, thanks to a number of resources on the topic, it seemed that much of the rest of the world was beginning to make the same realization. More and more stories related to the neuroscience of moral choice were coming out everywhere I looked. And dramas and books centering on psychopaths – perhaps the most fascinating examples of the stark difference between some humans and others in how they make moral choices – were attracting large audiences.

So I started this blog in order to help amplify this awakening to a new understanding about the factors underlying moral choice and, in turn, the types of events we refer to as “evil.”

Here on the blog, I’ve featured many stories that highlight the growing knowledge base at the intersection of neuroscience and morality. And today I read a quote that sums up well my feeling about this area of knowledge:

“It’s a field that’s waiting for a big revolution sometime soon.”

The quote is from Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor in Practical Ethics at Duke University’s Department of Philosophy and Kenan Institute for Ethics. And it comes from an article by Health and Science reporter Elizabeth Landau called “How your brain makes moral judgments” posted on CNN.com today as part of its “Inside Your Brain” series.

Landau’s article features a nice selection of ideas and research studies in this area of the neuroscience of morality. It demonstrates, yet again, that we do seem to be on the cusp of the revolution in the field to which Sinnott-Armstrong refers – and which this blog exists to help, in some small measure, to bring about – and explores the implications of that revolution.

It covers a variety of studies, relating to which areas of the brain do what when people make moral decisions, by some of the top researchers in the field, such as Joshua Greene and Adrian Raine.

It specifically discusses what is different in the relevant brain circuits in psychopaths as compared with others, a topic covered extensively on this site, as well as in autism.

And in one of its more fascinating aspects, it discusses how interventions in brain processes can manipulate moral judgments. For instance, it talks about research by Rebecca Saxe, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT and associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, in which the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to a particular area of the brain led to a temporary shift in response when making moral judgments.

In the article, Sinnott-Armstrong is quoted regarding one of the most controversial aspects of ponerology, saying that he “thinks one day there could be treatments directly developed for the brain in extreme cases, such as criminal psychopaths.”

“‘It’s possible that if we understand the neural circuits that underlie psychopaths and their behavior, we can use medications and magnetic stimulation to change their behavior,’ he said.

Such techniques might not work as well as behavioral training programs, however, he said.”

The article also talks about how different brain areas may be involved in different kinds of moral judgments and whether there may be cross-cultural differences in moral judgment.

All in all, a very worthwhile article for those interested in these topics and yet another example of the increasing recognition of this crucial area of study.

So I looked into it.

It turned out that, on that day, Cooper had done a segment with James Fallon, the neuroscientist who, in the process of studying the genetics and brains of psychopathic killers, discovered that he himself, despite being a successful non-violent researcher, had many of the genetic and brain markers associated with psychopathy.

I wrote a very detailed post about Fallon and his fascinating story last year called “Neuroscientist James Fallon’s Work & Life Shed Light on How Psychopathic Killers are Made…and Perhaps Prevented.” So I won’t cover that in any more detail here.

But Fallon has recently released a book about his story called The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. And, in the wake of the book’s release, he has been showing up more frequently in the media, sharing his insights about psychopathy, its impact in the world, and what his story tells us about the possibility of reducing the number of psychopaths that develop, which is wonderful.

The interview with Anderson Cooper is below and, even though this clip is only five minutes long, it could be five of the most important minutes I’ve ever seen on television.

Early in the interview, Fallon:

• Shares a bit about his story
• Talks about the psychopathic traits that can be recognized by looking at brain scans
• Explains the difference between the “cognitive empathy” that he and psychopaths have and “emotional empathy,” which they tend to lack

The upshot of Fallon’s story is that, despite having the genetic and biological markers for psychopathic traits, he did not become a full blown psychopath. In fact, he became a very productive, contributing member of society. He believes the reason is that he had a very loving upbringing, which counteracted his destructive biological predispositions. And he believes that such an upbringing can have the same beneficial impact on others with similar biological predispositions.

As Fallon tells Cooper:

“I thought everything was driven by genetics, biology. And I didn’t think nurture had anything to do with it. Once I realized, because of the genes I have, that if you’re brought up in a very nurturing environment, you can offset the biology.”

I agree that Fallon’s case offers us hope that, at least in a subset of cases, people with biological propensities for psychopathic traits can be prevented from becoming full-blown psychopaths. However, I still think a lot more research is needed to determine how generalizable his case is. Is Fallon representative of all or most people with these markers or is he in some way a rare or special case?

Contrast Fallon’s statement that a caring upbringing can offset biological predispositions for psychopathic traits with this quote from Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend by Barbara Oakley:

“Oddly enough, one study has shown that murderers who have a normal family upbringing have even lower function in their right orbitofrontal cortical areas than murderers who were abused during childhood. Perhaps murderers without a psychosocial ‘push’ toward violence require a greater neurobiological ‘push.’ In other words, children with less severe neurological problems may be helped by having a normal upbringing – but children with more severe neurological difficulties may not be.”

The study Oakley cites for this claim in the book’s footnotes is:

Adrian Raine et al., “Reduced Prefrontal and Increased Subcortical Brain Functioning Assessed Using Positron Emission Tomography in Predatory and Affective Murderers,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 16 (1998): 319-32.

I would like to see work to determine how Fallon’s claims and those of Raine’s study, which Oakley cites, can be reconciled.

The entire five minute clip of Cooper’s interview with Fallon is important. But, its last two minutes, from 3:13 on, take that to an even higher level, consisting of about as significant an exchange as I’ve ever seen aired.

Anderson Cooper basically admits to being convinced of the central point that many advocates of ponerology, from Andrew Lobaczewski on, have been trying to bring to public attention for decades now – that the influence of psychopathy and psychopathic traits in our world, including in circles of power – and specifically in the very highest circles of political power – is much greater than most people recognize.

Cooper says:

“I find this whole topic of psychopaths really interesting because I’m convinced there’s a lot more people out there who are psychopaths than we realize and particularly successful people, accomplished people, people on TV, people in the political sphere. I’m convinced there are tons of psychopaths.”

Fallon responds:

“If you look at, there was just a study done, a scientific study of all our presidents. And all the biographers answered all these questions about them and it was on a scale of psychopathy. And on the scale of psychopathy, in sort of the one part of psychopathy, not the criminality part but the other part which is a big part of psychopathy, the ones who scored very high were Theodore Roosevelt, JFK, FDR, Bill Clinton very high. The ones who had no psychopathy at all in this were people like Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford.

And when you look at the association of those psychopathic traits with leadership, it’s like we want these people, right, because they do things that are…they take chances, they lie at the right time. You know, FDR was lying all the time but he saved us so it was OK. So if you look at people that we choose to be leaders I think a lot of them have these traits and they’re part of leadership skills.”

Cooper then adds:

“I also think what it takes to propel somebody into the public sphere or propel somebody to success, I mean, it’s not, they are not normal impulses, I think and I think a lot of them are psychopathic impulses.”

Fallon responds:

“If you have that grand vision, cause psychopaths will have a grand vision – not all of them, some are just lousy rats – but people have that grandiose, narcissistic need and they’ve got something to prove and they’ve got something they say I’m gonna save the world. That’s part of it. Doesn’t make you psychopathic but it’s one of the traits that fits into this puzzle of psychopathy.”

Anderson Cooper is one high-profile journalist that seems to have realized the tremendous importance of ponerologic topics. Not long ago, he did a segment about Ariel Castro, the man who abducted three girls and held them captive for nearly ten years, in which the topic of psychopathy was front and center. Kudos to Cooper for recognizing how crucial it is that we educate the public on this subject and for courageously covering it on his show.

And the huge traffic surge that I saw as people looked for information in the wake of his interview with James Fallon?

That shows how much interest there is among the public about this topic. And it’s very heartening to see that interest increasingly being met not just by sensationalized fiction or news focused on titillating crimes, but by objective science disseminated by competent researchers and clinicians.

As for the psychopath test:

Well, after the interview with Fallon, not shown in the clip in this post, Cooper said:

“As I said, I find this just amazing. If you’re curious about where you fall on that scale of psychopathy, you can actually take a test to find out. We’ve posted it on our web site AC360.com. It just takes a couple of minutes. I’ve taken it. Pretty much everyone on our staff has taken it and let’s say the results are very, very interesting.”

The link he references on the AC360 blog is here.

And, from that page, it links to the quizzes page associated with Channel 4’s episode “Psychopath Night”, which features tests devised by Kevin Dutton, author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths.

Little did I know that, in the course of researching for that post, I would come across an episode of Explorer seemingly even more precisely relevant to ponerology than that. But that is just what happened.

Ponerology is defined as “the science of evil.” And, to my surprise, I came across a 2008 episode of Explorer actually entitled “Science of Evil.”

Just as in “Born to Rage,” the main framework for this episode’s exploration is established by the narrator early on. This time the guiding quote is this:

“Evil. It is blamed for cruelty beyond our mind’s comprehension. Is it a dark force outside of us that we are all vulnerable to, that we must work to resist? Is it inside of us, a stain on the soul, a dysfunction of the brain? Or just a word used to distance ourselves from inherently human behavior?”

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

“Science of Evil” focuses on four stories:

• One of the “usual suspects” when discussing evil, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, gives a detailed chronology of the development of sadistic events in his famous Stanford prison experiment and discusses its relationship to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, after which he was called as an expert defense witness in the court martial of one of the accused American officers.
• We get a look at notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer through the eyes of Reverend Roy Ratcliff, a minister who met with Dahmer at a maximum security prison in Wisconsin in 1994 to discuss the Bible and ultimately help fulfill Dahmer’s request to be baptized.
• Joshua Greene, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard, speaks about what defines evil and – along with colleague Jonathan Cohen of Princeton’s Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior – introduces us to their fMRI research, imaging people’s brains during moral decision-making to determine the sometimes conflicting neurological processes involved in our sense of right and wrong.
• We follow Aya Schneerson of the United Nations’ World Food Program as she reveals through her work some of the atrocities she has witnessed in the course of distributing food in war-torn Eastern Congo that she considers evil.

As these stories play out, we are led to consider how situational and neurological factors can both play roles in the development of behavior often deemed evil and the implications of what we may discover as we continue teasing apart their relative contributions to the harm and suffering in our world.

National Geographic Explorer’s “Science of Evil” provides a rather cursory overview of some of the questions involved in ponerology. It doesn’t do nearly as much to provide answers to those questions as some of the other resources featured on this site do. But it may, nonetheless, inspire curiosity in a newcomer to these issues.

I write frequently about the fact that, despite the increased level of attention to it that we document here, this topic, the science regarding malicious and neglectful activity – a.k.a. the “science of evil” – is vastly under-discussed and under-promoted in our society. The fact that even I, having researched and written about this topic for years, was unaware until now that this episode of Explorer even existed offers just one more illustration of that. But hopefully, sharing it here will enable it to reach a few more people who will share it with those they know and so on.

Our last post focused on Raine’s essay “The Criminal Mind,” featured in the April 27, 2013 Wall Street Journal, in which he discussed how advances in our understanding of the genetic, neurological and environmental bases of violence are influencing our view of and approach to crime.

Now another large media outlet, CNN, has run not one, but two segments featuring Raine’s work.

In a segment entitled “The Anatomy of Violence: A look inside the minds of killers,” CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked to Raine and discussed his work’s possible relevance in understanding why the Boston Marathon bombings occurred.

The segment opens with footage of the bombings, over which Gupta says:

“In the wake of tragedy come the inevitable questions. What makes a killer? Is there a switch that turns on a rampage? And why? Why would someone do this?”

Adrian Raine then appears on the screen and says that to simply label a person that commits such acts “evil” is “13th-century thinking.” Gupta introduces Raine, explaining that Raine believes there are “biological explanations for violence” and Raine then explains why he believes that brain dysfunction may partly explain the Boston Marathon bombings.

One interesting condition that Raine mentions that he found relevant, given that the older of the two brothers charged with the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was a very skilled boxer, is a recognized brain abnormality called Cavum Septum Pellucidum. Raine says that this condition, in which a maldeveloped limbic system fails to normally put pressure on and thus fuse the leaflets of the Septum Pellucidum, predisposes to a psychopathic personality marked by fearlessness and the ability to commit remorseless violence. For whatever it is worth, he says it has also been found in boxers.

In fact, in reading Wikipedia’s page about Cavum Septum Pellucidum, I became aware that perhaps the most famous fictional boxer of all time, Rocky Balboa, was specifically told in Rocky V that he had this very condition.

I could only find video of the scene in which Rocky receives this diagnosis online in Italian. And the translation has “pellucidum” apparently incorrectly transformed into “pelliculum,” which may be why the poster put a question mark at the end of the video’s title of “Cavum Septum Pelliculum?” You can see an English translation here. But here is the clip.

Gupta then shows us, using imagery from a psychopath’s brain, the smaller amygdalae found in psychopaths in Raine’s research, which also contribute to the fearlessness and disinhibition that could enable one to commit harmful acts like the Boston bombings.

Gupta also discussed the possible link between Raine’s work and the Boston Marathon bombings in another segment on the CNN program The Lead with Jake Tapper.

During the segment, which begins with the lower third title again saying “The Anatomy of Violence: A look inside the minds of killers,” host Tapper says, in reference to those bombings, that we are trying to “understand this unmitigated evil.” In that spirit, he asks Gupta about the bombers, Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev themselves, as well as about the three men later arrested for having attempted to help Dzhokar cover up his involvement. Gupta mentions having spoken to Adrian Raine about this topic and says it may be relevant to understand that Dzhokar and the three arrested later, all being just 19 years old, may have had a combination of fully developed and fueled emotional brain centers along with not-yet-fully-developed judgment centers in their frontal lobes.

The title in the lower third then changes to “The Mind of a Terror Suspect: Could brain chemistry have played role in bombings?”

Tapper raises the issue of whether defense attorneys will use our increased insight into the genetic and neurological underpinnings of harmful behavior to argue that their clients’ actions should be excused. Gupta calls our advancing understanding of the biological roots of crime and violence “an emerging science” and then offers two examples that really highlight the difficulty of assigning appropriate levels of blame to those that commit harmful acts while suffering from certain biological conditions.

• First, Gupta mentions that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, in which a mother’s drinking during pregnancy harms the developing fetus’ brain, leads that baby in later life to have a much higher likelihood of committing crimes and a nineteen times greater chance than otherwise of ending up in prison.
• Gupta also mentions how a brain tumor can drastically change an otherwise normally-functioning person’s behavior.

This is one of the first times I have seen ponerologic material discussed so explicitly on CNN. However, it isn’t the first. For instance:

• In the wake of the Newtown school shootings, I saw Erin Burnett interview Dr. James Fallon about the biological markers of psychopathy and whether he expected them to be discovered post-mortem in shooter Adam Lanza.

• I also saw a recent segment in which anchor Don Lemon intereviewed criminal profiler Jim Clemente and forensic psychiatrist Helen Morrison about the prevalence of sociopathy. (I tried to find video of this latter segment to share on this site but it seems it was never posted online. However, the transcript of the segment can be found about 1/4 of the way down the page of this transcript of Lemon’s entire show that night.)

But it was really nice to see Sanjay Gupta, who I believe is deservedly highly regarded as a physician, scientist and journalist, covering this topic from a professional and medical perspective. This is the type of coverage I would love to see more of on CNN and similar networks. And I’m glad that I have seen a lot more of it in the past few months than I can remember ever seeing before.

Today’s Wall Street Journal features a sizeable piece by Raine as its “Saturday Essay.”

The title of the essay is “The Criminal Mind” and underneath the title it says “Advances in genetics and neuroscience are revolutionizing our understanding of violent behavior—as well as ideas about how to prevent and punish crime.”

It doesn’t get much more relevant to ponerology than that. And it’s heartening to see Raine given a platform to share his extremely important and provocative ideas in The Wall Street Journal just in advance of the release of his book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.

Raine’s essay touches on:

• The history of criminology as a science and its sometimes unfortunate devolution into pseudoscience
• The rise of neurocriminology
• The roles of genetics, environmental and developmental factors and brain structure and function in the emergence of aggression and antisocial behavior
• The political and social implications of a focus on biological bases for crime
• Recommendations for legal policies that account for our growing ponerologic understanding by both assigning appropriate levels of responsibility to offenders and optimally protecting the rest of society from the threats they pose
• Measures – including some relatively non-invasive ones – that can help significantly reduce the likelihood of harmful behavior in children that display signs of severe aggression

The article is accompanied by the video below. In it, Raine explains the relationship between diminished prefrontal cortex activity and violence, how such prefrontal dysfunction originates and possible treatments for such conditions, as well as how those with normal prefrontal activity but undersized amygdalae can also commit violence in a more planned and calculating fashion.

Raine also offers his opinion in the video about the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon.

One response that has gotten a lot of attention is the one posted on Facebook by comedian and actor Patton Oswalt.

I highly doubt that Oswalt has ever heard of the term ponerology. But his response, more than many others, especially from celebrities, actually comes close to placing the event in a ponerologic context.

So first I want to point out the particular statements that reflect a somewhat-ponerologic perspective in his writing.

Toward the very beginning of his post, Oswalt says:

“I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.”

So he is very quickly zeroing in explicitly on sociopathy as a potential factor.

Just two sentences later he says:

“If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet.”

Here, he is already discussing the damaging act in terms of the statistical makeup of the population as broken down by those who purposefully cause significant harm and those who do not. Considering such statistics is one of the central roles of ponerology. Note that Robert Hare, the world expert on psychopathy (slightly different from sociopathy), estimates that psychopaths make up 1% of the population.

Later Oswalt says:

“…every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.”

I’m not sure if he even realizes how literally relevant his implication of “wiring” in the malice of a certain percentage of people really is. But ponerology is deeply involved in attempts to use neuroscience to discover how neurobiology contributes to harmful behavior and we cover that topic frequently on this site.

Oswalt then proceeds to comment on how those who are not evil vastly outnumber those who are. And he invokes an evolutionary viewpoint when he points out:

“We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.”

Overall, for someone who is not a professional in this area and probably has no specific knowledge of ponerology or related subjects, I think Oswalt’s response if full of valuable insights. While there is nothing wrong with simply expressing one’s emotional reaction to a painful situation, as many have done, it’s nice to see social media used to put forth a response to a damaging act that shares some real wisdom.

However, in addition to sharing and offering a bit of analysis of his response, I’d also like to show how ponerology – at least as Andrew M. Lobaczewski and some others have viewed it – might reveal the situation to be a bit more complicated than Oswalt portrays it to be here.

Oswalt attempts to inject some hope into the situation by pointing out that:

“…the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak.”

and:

“…when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good outnumber you, and we always will.’”

Oswalt is correct that, by a huge majority, non-pathological people outnumber the pathological. However, this does not imply that the non-pathological necessarily exercise more power for several reasons:

1. The pathological demonstrate specific skill at rising in hierarchies, which, by definition, afford much greater influence to those in some positions than others. So even though there may be fewer pathological people, they may be in positions where they have enormously disproportionate influence.
2. The constant development of increasingly powerful modern technology enables fewer and fewer people, if willing to employ it inhumanely, to inflict greater and greater damage.
3. As the Milgram experiment showed, a huge percentage of non-pathological people will, despite any qualms, comply with the directives of those they perceive as authority figures, even if those directives involve knowingly inflicting great harm on others.
4. As the Stanford Prison Experiment showed, systemic factors and contexts can influence even non-pathological people to act in sociopathic and sadistic ways. In other words, as systems thinking often points out, structure can create behavior. And, if even a few pathological people are in positions of power, they can shape systems and structures so as to drive much of the rest of the population to act in ways that mirror their pathological values.

So while Oswalt’s response is quite astute and comes close to offering a realistic perspective about how to approach the fact that we live in this world alongside pathological people, I think the work of Lobaczewski, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo can help modify his advice to make it a little bit more effective.

Outnumbering the pathological isn’t enough. In order to develop a situation in which cooperation overcomes exploitation, non-pathological people must become educated about the dynamics of ponerology so that they can recognize leverage points to resist the influence of even powerful pathological people and reshape systems that otherwise drive them into pathological positions even if they themselves are not pathological.

The real hope comes from the fact that, in Milgram’s experiments, while 2/3 of participants were willing to administer the maximum voltage to a screaming confederate when ordered by the authority figure, and a frightening 90% were willing if they first saw someone else do it, 90% rebelled if they first saw someone else rebel.

That means that, just as pathological people can exert disproportionate influence, so can those who resist them, even when those they resist occupy positions of authority, as their personal resistance generates a ripple effect of resistance.

I hope that Patton Oswalt and those who were moved by his thoughtful response to these bombings in Boston will take the time to do more research about ponerology and the highly relevant work of those mentioned in this article. Perhaps the best tribute we can pay to the people, families and communities suffering in the wake of this event is to use it as a springboard from which to learn more about the actual science of evil. That science may well offer us our best chance for moving beyond relatively helpless hope and prayer to real understanding of how to prevent and mitigate future harmful malicious and neglectful activities.

One of the first such people I “met” after starting this website was Jack Pemment who runs the brilliantly titled Blame the Amygdala site. Jack is an eloquent writer and a graduate student at the University of Mississippi who passionately studies, among other things, the neurological basis for moral decision-making. This includes consideration of autism, psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. He is also investigating the biology of aggression.

All of these subjects lie right at the heart of ponerology and are talked about often on this site.

I highly recommend you check out Jack’s site.

It only took me a short time reading his site to realize that Jack has a talent for thinking and writing about these crucial matters in novel ways. But that was really confirmed when I discovered that recently he released an actual novel about these matters.

It’s called Seeing Red.

As Jack explains it, the novel was spawned from the recognition that people with atypical neurology, who see the world in ways startlingly different from most of us, make for intriguing characters.

And so he created Daniel Harris, a man with synesthesia, a condition in which stimulation of one sense triggers responses in other senses. A synesthete may, for example, experience a visual color in response to a sound or a taste in response to a spoken word. Harris’ synesthesia consists of him experiencing different colors around the bodies of particular people he meets, with each color evoking an associated taste.

What makes the story relevant to ponerology is that Harris’ quirk turns out to enable him to instantly identify psychopaths. Soon he is being engaged in the search for a psychopathic serial killer.

Pemment’s tagline for the novel says it all:

Synesthesia is learning to kick psychopathy’s ass!

I haven’t read the book, but it sounds fascinating and reminds me of one of the great science fiction stories relevant to ponerology, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick, which was the basis for the film Blade Runner. As long as it is done with responsibility, taking care to convey the science with basic accuracy, I think embedding ponerologic science in gripping or entertaining art is a fantastic way to get these ideas out more widely to the public. And having read Jack’s site and seen his writing talent, I suspect Seeing Red will prove worth a read.

Most who work in the fields that study aspects of this question take the view that the answer involves some combination of the two.

But this still leaves us with another question. In what proportion do each of these factors contribute in which people?

One remarkable case offers some fascinating insight on the subject.

Dr. James Fallon

James Fallon, Ph.D. is a highly decorated neuroscientist and Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Neurobiology at University of California, Irvine. Dr. Fallon has several areas of expertise. One is adult stem cells. Another is psychiatry. Specifically, he is interested in the relationships between brain imaging (he has served as Director of UC Irvine’s Human Brain Imaging Center), genetics and various psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, depression and addictions.

An Extraordinary Experiment

Aware of his specialties, for many years, Fallon’s colleagues have sent him brain images they wished to have him analyze.

At one point this interchange took the form of an experiment.

Colleagues sent him 70 MRI scans of brains belonging to people ranging from healthy to mentally ill. Included in the batch were scans of brains belonging to killers, including some notorious ones. But Fallon had no idea which scanned brain belonged to whom.

Nonetheless, he was able to identify differences in five of the scans so dramatic that he could recognize them as the markers of psychopathy. And it turned out that he was correct. The five scans on which he zeroed in actually were those from the brains of psychopathic serial killers.

Signs of the Psychopath’s Brain

How could Fallon distinguish the serial killers’ brain scans from the others? He says that all five had some tell-tale signs:

• A lack of activity in the orbital cortex, the brain area just above the eyes, which he says is in the circuit coding for ethics, conscience and impulse control
• A lack of activity in the anterior part of the temporal cortex, where we find the amygdala, a structure deeply involved in processing emotion
• Underfunctioning in the narrow strip of limbic cortices that connect the orbital cortex with the amygdala, namely:
  • The cingulate cortex, which codes for social cues
  • The hippocampal area, which, along with the amygdala, codes for emotional memories
  • The insula, which processes empathy and “gut feelings”

This makes sense. These areas are considered part of the limbic system, the brain complex primarily responsible for our emotional lives. When these areas are underactive or inactive, a person might feel driven – like many killers – to compensate by repeatedly pursuing extreme activities simply to feel satisfied and alive.

Violence-Related Genes

In addition to his study of killers’ brains, Fallon has also studied the genetics of aggression and violence.

Psychological traits are affected by multiple genes. And Fallon says that perhaps a dozen have been identified as high-risk, violence-related genes. These include genes affecting dopamine and norepinephrine neurotransmission and androgen (testosterone) receptors.

The most well-known of these violence-related genes is a particular version of the Monoamine Oxidase A (MAOA) gene. Because it was the first such gene discovered, it was labeled, and has become popularly known as, “the Warrior Gene,” although Fallon stresses that this nickname can be misleading since all of the various genes associated with violence and aggression could be considered, in a sense, warrior genes.

Most humans have an MAOA gene and it helps regulate serotonin, a neurotransmitter that Fallon says helps relax and calm us. But those with the “Warrior Gene” form of it receive too much serotonin during development in utero, which desensitizes the brain to its effects. That means that later in life, when serotonin would otherwise inhibit behavior, it is unable to do so, resulting in impulsivity and violence.

The MAOA gene is on the X chromosome. This has important implications for how its effects express themselves in males vs. females. Girls get an X chromosome from both their mother and father, so even if one parent passes along the “Warrior Gene” variant, they are likely to get a normally functional MAOA variant from the other parent that offsets its potentially dangerous consequences. But boys get only one X chromosome – the one passed down from their mother. If that X chromosome has the “Warrior” version of the MAOA gene, that will be the only version of it that the boy receives.

This means that violence related to the MAOA “Warrior Gene” is usually passed genetically from mother to son. Fallon believes it also explains why boys and men are much more likely to be very aggressive or psychopathic killers.

Moreover, Fallon says that the reduced empathy seen in psychopathy may be associated with the influence of low acting genes related to the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin.

Can Biology Alone Create a Psychopath?

So, putting this together, Fallon recognized patterns in both the brains and genetics of psychopathic killers.

1. Loss of function in the orbital cortex, anterior temporal lobes and the strip of limbic cortices connecting the two
2. Having one or more of several high-risk, violence-related genes (like the so-called “Warrior Gene”)

But a crucial question remained. Are these biological markers alone enough to create a psychopath?

Fallon suspected not. But little did he know that he would receive some validation for this suspicion from so close to home.

A Shocking Fallon Family Pattern is Revealed

Based on his work, Fallon was giving many presentations about psychopathic killers. His mother said that, since he was doing this, he should probably know about the release of a new book called Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell.

The Cornells, you see, were direct ancestors of Fallon’s father. One of them, for instance, was Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University. But Killed Strangely is about another, more sinister Cornell: Thomas Cornell, who killed his mother, Rebecca, and was hanged for it in 1673, the first case of matricide, Fallon says, recorded in the new American colonies.

Investigating further, Fallon discovered that the rabbit hole went even deeper. There were actually seven murders committed by those within his father’s family line. This line also included Lizzie Borden, his cousin, who was controversially acquitted of killing her father and stepmother with an axe in 1892.

Testing Enlightens the Fallons

After learning of his family’s bloody history, James Fallon decided to have brain imaging – PET scans and EEG’s – as well as genetic analyses carried out on himself and nine family members, including his parents, wife and children, to see if any had the markings of killers.

The results:

• All of the images of the family members’ brains were normal when analyzed for markers of potential violence…except for the images of one, Fallon’s own. His scan looked identical to those of the serial killers he had studied, with a malfunctioning limbic system lacking activity in the orbital cortex, anterior temporal lobes and areas connecting them.
• The entire family exhibited a typical mix of genes related to aggression, impulsivity and other relevant traits…except one member. Fallon himself not only had high-risk genes associated with violence, but he had far more of them than many psychopaths and killers. In fact, he says, he had almost all of them.

His family’s reaction to these results is quite interesting:

His son said that he always knew there was something “off” about his father and that, at times, he had feared him because he is a “hothead” with all the traits you’d expect in a serial killer. He said this makes more sense now that he knows that his father has the brain and genetics of a psychopath.

Fallon’s wife said the results were surprising, yet not surprising because he is, in a way, two people, with a funny, gregarious side mixed with a standoffish side.

James Fallon himself does admit to some macabre interests, a predilection for risk-taking and a superficial charm, which you might see in psychopaths and murderers. And he also admits he may sometimes be drawn to behavior that he knows is wrong but “still doesn’t care.”

The Third Ingredient

But, however imperfect, James Fallon is not violent or a killer. And this has enormous implications.

How is it that, despite having so many biological markers for violence, Fallon ended up a scholar rather than an aggressor or even a murderer?

Fallon has come to believe that, in addition to particular brain and genetic patterns, there is a third ingredient involved in the development of a violent psychopath. The environment, he explains, can help determine whether violence-related genes and certain brain processes, such as those involving mirror neurons, are triggered towards aggression. Specifically, he believes that abuse – especially severe early childhood sexual, physical or emotional abuse – is instrumental in this process. And he also believes that the precise timing of when various factors come into play is critically important in determining whether one becomes a psychopath and, if so, exactly what type of psychopathological behavior is exhibited.

As for why he himself is not a violent man, Dr. Fallon credits his upbringing in a highly nurturing environment, in which he was not only not abused, but was showered with wonderfully loving family support.

Some of Dr. James Fallon’s Appearances

Fallon has spoken on these topics in a number of forums, including:

• This television interview
• A TED talk entitled “Jim Fallon: Exploring the mind of a killer”Here, Fallon talks about his research and his story.

  He also gives a brief synopsis of a talk he did in Israel about his theory of transgenerational, sex-linked violence in perpetually conflicted world regions. His theory is that severe trauma before the onset of puberty triggers violent expression in those with violence-related genes such as, for example, the “Warrior” version of the MAOA gene. When this happens frequently in an area, the environment becomes increasingly threatening, so aggressive men, capable of physical protection and more likely to carry these genes, become more and more attractive to females. In consequence, violence-related genes become relatively highly concentrated in the population’s gene pool, sparking a vicious cycle.

  This theory is consistent with a similar, somewhat stunning, phenomenon that I discussed in my own writings on psychopathy.

• An episode of Reason TV called “Three Ingredients for Murder: Neuroscientist James Fallon on Psychopaths and Libertarians”Here, in addition to sharing his story, Fallon discusses the implications of work like his for our views of free will and responsibility, as well as for our legal system, especially in regards to psychopaths. He also discusses how our increasing ability to recognize each person’s unique makeup will challenge our capacity for creating standards in public policy and drive us toward individualized medicine. And he explains why he is a libertarian and how that may correlate with the function and/or lack of function in certain brain areas.

• A September 2011 episode of the BBC program Horizon entitled “Are You Good or Evil?”In these clips from the show, Fallon talks about his research on the brain scans of murderers, the tests carried out on him and his family and his discovery that his results showed the brain and genetic patterns seen in psychopathy.

  The first video also contains a quote that I found very powerful which serves to crystallize Fallon’s study of killers:

  It really indicated that there was a biological basis – a really hardcore brain basis – for this urge to kill.

  
  The second video includes the comments about his personality attributed earlier to his son and his wife.

• A segment called “Confessions of a Pro-Social Psychopath” produced by the World Science Festival in conjunction with The Moth, a non-profit that promotes storytelling.The title of this talk grabbed me because I had often wondered whether there could be “pro-social psychopaths,” but I had never heard the term used elsewhere. I also found this to be a nice overall telling of his story by Fallon.

Dr. Fallon also appeared on a November 18, 2009 episode of Criminal Minds, the CBS drama about FBI profilers. In the episode, which was based on his TED talk, he played himself giving a lecture about his theory of transgenerational violence in areas of conflict, which was mentioned earlier.

What Fallon May Tell Us About a Possible Future with Less Psychopaths and Killers

What are the implications of Fallon’s research and his story for society at large?

Well, there are some conditions for which we screen early in life. If we detect that a person has or is at risk for such a condition, we can then intervene in time to prevent or best manage it.

A good example is phenylketonuria (PKU). This is a genetic disorder in which an enzyme needed to properly metabolize a particular amino acid, phenylalanine, is rendered nonfunctional. As a result, a person with PKU who eats a normal diet can experience severe consequences including mental retardation.

Luckily, in most countries, newborns are screened for PKU. If it is detected, they can be put on a special diet in which phenylalanine is restricted and special supplements are provided. As a result, the person with PKU can live a normal, healthy life.

Fallon’s case raises the possibility that, as advocated by Adrian Raine, we may someday be able to screen children for a predisposition to psychopathy and, when they are identified as at-risk, intervene with special measures to prevent or best manage the development of violent or other dangerous propensities in at least some of them. Further research could be done to more specifically identify the types of measures that bring about the healthiest outcomes for such individuals and those around them. But it’s likely that these would include conscientious provision, throughout these youngsters’ upbringings, of the abundance of love and care for which Fallon credits his own nonviolent lifestyle.

In other words, we may someday see a future when all, or at least at-risk, families will be tested for the markers of violence just the way Fallon’s was so that those who do have the brains and genes we find in psychopaths can more often develop into, say, professors like James Fallon rather than killers like too many others – including some of those he has studied for a living and quite a few of his recent ancestors.

Well there is actually a research journal by that very name. And that journal, Social Neuroscience, has recently honed in on topics at the very heart of ponerology. Its latest issue – Volume 8, Issue 2 – is a special issue focusing on aggression and violence.

It features an editorial entitled “The social cognitive neuroscience of aggression, violence, and psychopathy” followed by six studies that consider the links between neurological markers and responses and harmful behavior.

Here is a summary of the six studies in this special issue.

Affective startle potentiation in juvenile offenders: The role of conduct problems and psychopathic traits

• Exposed male juvenile offenders and controls to aversive sounds to compare emotion processing via measuring their startle reflexes.
• Found that juvenile offenders have fewer blinks in response to the startling sounds and the number of blinks decreases as their level of conduct disorder symptoms and psychopathic traits increases.

The neural signatures of distinct psychopathic traits

• Looked at and documented a relationship between young adults’ measures in several categories of psychopathic traits, their amygdala reactivity in response to threats and their ventral striatum reactivity in response to potential rewards.

Neural correlates of risk taking in violent criminal offenders characterized by emotional hypo- and hyper-reactivity

• Had antisocial criminals and healthy non-criminals make financial decisions involving different levels of risk while under functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
• Found that offenders with lower emotional reactivity had less rostral anterior cingulate cortex activity than healthy people when uncertain, as well as less prefrontal cortex activity when trying to control their responses accordingly so as to make safe choices.
• This indicates that the offenders have difficulty emotionally representing uncertainty or anticipating punishment.

Vasopressin modulates neural responses during human reactive aggression

• Administered vasopressin, which is known to modulate mammalian aggressive behavior, or placebo to healthy men, who then performed in a competitive reaction time task while under fMRI.
• The men who received vasopressin displayed more activity in the right superior temporal sulcus while making decisions under threat of punishment if they lost the competition, but no behavioral differences were recognized between the two groups.

Endogenous testosterone and cortisol modulate neural responses during induced anger control

• Healthy Asian males were asked to control their anger while being insulted under fMRI monitoring to study the relationship and influence of testosterone and cortisol levels.
• Found that testosterone level correlated positively with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and thalamus activity when cortisol levels were low, but not when cortisol levels were high.
• Also found greater functional connectivity between the amygdala and a top-down prefrontal cortical control network while subjects tried to control their anger and that this connectivity was greatest in those with high testosterone and low cortisol.
• All of this suggests a possible mechanism where testosterone and cortisol modulate anger control neurally.

Asymmetry in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and aggressive behavior: A continuous theta-burst magnetic stimulation study

• Randomly applied vs. did not apply continuous theta-burst magnetic stimulation (cTBS), an inhibitory procedure, to study the role of the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) – which typically help inhibit impulse control – in aggression. After real or sham cTBS application, subjects engaged in a monetary task designed to assess proactive and reactive aggression.
• Found that targeting the left DLPFC with cTBS increased both proactive and reactive aggressive responses more than targeting the right, indicating the left DLPFC is more involved in modulating aggression.

As the introductory editorial describes, this issue is a reflection of the shift in the mid-90’s from a focus on attentional differences in the aggressive and psychopathic to a focus on their neurobiological and emotional dysfunctions, even though attentional differences also play an important role. It says the included studies, as a whole, demonstrate three themes:

1. “That there are different neurobiological risk factors for an increased risk for aggression and antisocial behavior.” – The risk factors associated with psychopathy differ from those associated with threat/frustration based reactive aggression, for example.
2. A relationship between reinforcement processing – processing of potential risk and rewards – and psychopathy
3. A potential relationship between brain areas associated with top-down attention and response control and “an increased risk for predominantly reactive aggression.”