Inside the Brain of a Psychopath

Psychopaths literally have a different

brain

than yours or mine, unless of course you're a

psychopath

, in which case I hope this video gives you an idea of ​​what's going on with your

brain

, but for me

psychopath

y always It has been a morbid curiosity. I mean, they're like the margins of humanity. Why are they incapable of feeling empathy? Why are they so willing to take risks, even if that risk almost carries a guaranteed death sentence or life in prison? Why are so many CEOs psychopaths? What is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? Is there even a potential treatment for psychopathy or are we simply doomed to live in fear of these individuals for the rest of eternity?

This is going to be a little scary. Let's do it! There is no official diagnosis of psychopath or sociopath. Rather, they are terms that the public or even professionals will use to communicate only the behavioral symptoms someone is experiencing. In fact, both psychopathy and sociopathy belong to what is known as antisocial personality disorder or APD. Now, APD is one of the four personality disorders that belong to what is called cluster B personality disorders. The other three will be borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic disorder. of personality. Now, although none of these disorders are desirable for any reason, APD is commonly seen or believed to be the worst among them and this is because APD may have some of the characteristics found in those other disorders, but still suffering. antisocial personality disorder.

So, for example, a sociopath may be impulsive, which is also what someone with borderline personality disorder would exhibit, but a sociopath would not be said to suffer from borderline personality disorder. Instead, they will only share borderline traits, but will still suffer from antisocial personality disorder. Now, APD can actually manifest differently in different individuals. This is what we really mean when we say Psychopathy or Sociopathy. Now, definitions change over time and that's just a product of science, right? The more you learn about something, the more you have to change it as you go, but you'll probably find it easier to think of psychopathy as the end result or product of physical problems combined with environmental problems, while sociopathy will be almost pure. . product of environmental conditions.

So in other words, a psychopath is actually born with physical problems in his nervous system and then environmental conditions such as childhood trauma are added to him. On the other hand, a sociopath will be born with an essentially normal functioning nervous system, but due to childhood trauma or abuse, her nervous system will change. So, it's... I mean, it's an oversimplification and therefore it's really better to think of them as just suffering from antisocial personality disorder, but for our purposes, that should work fine. Now, to understand what is physically happening with a psychopath's brain, we must first look at a well-known neurotransmitter called serotonin.

Now, serotonin is a monoamine neurotransmitter or neuromodulator. Basically all that means is that when released it will activate or stop one signal, or may actually change the operation of another signal. Serotonin is now widely distributed throughout the body. In fact, surprisingly most of it is found in the digestive tract, but in the brain (so let me take the brain here and turn it around) serotonin will be produced here in the brain stem and there will be groups of nuclei called Raphe Nuclei. and they are going to produce serotonin and then they are going to have neuronal projections that are going to bring serotonin to almost the entire brain.

When serotonin is released at the synapse and the synapse is really just the place where two or more neurons communicate with each other, it actually first comes out of what's called a presynaptic neuron and the presynaptic neuron is just the first neuron. From there, the serotonin will go to a space between the neurons called the synaptic cleft, because, interestingly, the neurons are not actually at least at the synaptic site: they are not in contact with each other. Instead, there is room for chemistry to occur in those gaps. Serotonin will then leave that presynaptic neuron in the synaptic cleft and then bind to the receptors on that secondary neuron called the postsynaptic neuron.

And depending on the location, the type of neuron, and various other facts, serotonin will initiate something, inhibit something, or change some type of activity within that synapse. So now that the synapses have communicated with serotonin, something has to happen to serotonin. Then, much of that serotonin will be reabsorbed back into that presynaptic neuron. We call it serotonin reuptake, but not all of it. In reality, some of it will stay inside the synaptic cleft, but it also has to leave. So what the body will do is break it down and it does so with an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A or MAOA for short.

So what ends up happening is this combination of reuptake and decay and what it does is it just temporarily pulls serotonin out of the synapse. Again, temporary because what will happen then is okay, once the synapse has to fire again and the serotonin has to be released, then you can get an appropriate response because you know how much serotonin will be present. Now, the activity of this enzyme is encoded by a DNA sequence called the MAOA gene located on an X chromosome. Now, there may be different versions or alleles or variants of this gene. You can have what's called MAOA-H or MAOA-L and all that means is that you have high activity in the gene or low activity in the gene at least when you compare it to a normally functioning MAOA gene.

The reason I mention this is because researchers have found that most, if not all, psychopaths have the low-functioning variant of the MAOA gene and in some particularly rare cases there have been entire family lines that have the gene completely disabled, which means they don't break. Serotonin drops through the synapse. Now some of you may be wondering why this is a problem. I mean, serotonin is commonly described as the “happiness neurotransmitter.” So in that case, I would suggest that having more would make you feel better or happier, not worse. I mean, just look at SSRIs, for example, SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor and these are the antidepressants of choice for many doctors and they essentially work by limiting the amount of serotonin that is reabsorbed into that presynaptic neuron.

Although maybe I shouldn't say that because we don't have a very clear understanding of how exactly SSRIs work. What we do know is that they have an effect on serotonin and tend to improve symptoms of depression, but this is where a lot goes wrong in their assumptions about brain chemistry. Neurotransmitters are not the only ones responsible for anything. Dopamine is not responsible for joy or pleasure and serotonin is not responsible for happiness. Rather, they play roles in these behaviors and movements, right? They work with other hormones and other neurotransmitters and it's this complex dance. I often tell my students to think about brain chemistry and neurotransmission similarly to an orchestra or a symphony, right?

You may enjoy the violin, but you don't want to hear only the violin when you listen to an orchestra or a symphony. Instead, you want the violin to play at the right time, at the right cadence, and at the right volume, right? All of these tools are there to arrive at the right time and in the right way and, all together, create an experience. This is the best way to think about neurotransmission and brain chemistry as a whole. So instead of saying that serotonin is responsible for happiness, we should say that serotonin plays a role in happiness and also in emotions and behavior in general.

Now you might be thinking, "Eureka, we found it. This is the gene responsible for aggression. All we have to do is genetically engineer it, cut it out, throw it in the trash, and boom... We don't have any more psychopathic serials." "murderers." That would be great, but it's not that simple, and that's because aggression, like all emotions, is complex. Therefore, the mere presence of this low-activity variant does not equate to being aggressive or psychopathic. Instead, it's what we call a predictor of aggression. Now, the thing is, serotonin plays a role in brain development in general, if you look at the growing brain in the womb (so, we talk about embryogenesis). and then we talk about fetal development).

Serotonin floods the brain and is part of this complex dance to help the brain mature and become what will be a fully functioning brain, but one wonders: does anyone have this MAOA- variant? L, what could that mean for serotonin collapse during brain development, what kind of repercussions could that have? Now, let's get into that, but real quick, first I want to mention something else and you might remember I said earlier that? The MAOA gene is located on an You get one from your mother, one from your father. Since women have two X chromosomes, your mother can only give you one X chromosome.

But since men have X and Y, your father can give you either one. This means that the father is the one who determines the sex of the child. Well, the vast majority of psychopaths are men. And when you think about it from this chromosomal perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Because let's say a woman has the low activity variant on one of her X chromosomes, if she's not on the other X, they cancel each other out. This means that she probably won't show that aggressive behavior that comes from it. However, in males they only have one X chromosome.

So if they got it, they just got it. There is no cancellation. It also means that the genetic indicator, the genetic deficiency, the predictor of aggression, is actually passed from mother to child. It is now possible for women to become psychopaths and they have. It is much less likely because you need to have both X chromosomes to have this variant. This is one of the many reasons why researchers were so excited when they first discovered the link between MAOA-L and psychopathy. In fact, it was initially nicknamed the "fighter" gene because it matched many expectations around psychopathy and aggression, but the problem is that they very quickly discovered that simply having this low-activity variant does not make you a psychopath and aggressive.

You see a lot of people who don't have it. So it's not a one-to-one correlation and they realized that meant there had to be something else tipping the scales. If it plays a role, even if it is significant, it is not enough to get you over the hill. Instead, there must be something else. And what they've realized since then is probably a combination of environmental conditions: So the way the brain grows and changes are probably a product of serotonin changes during brain development. Now, people with antisocial personality disorder are very difficult to study, and the reason is that they do not willingly seek treatment.

So unless they get a court order or they're in jail or they're dead and you're just studying them posthumously, they're not going to actively try to fix themselves because they don't see anything wrong with themselves, but the best data we have on psychopathy, Sociopathy and APD in general come from PET scans, which stands for positron emission tomography and which allow us to see the metabolism of the brain. I guess I should say: exactly what areas. They are metabolically active during specific thoughts and emotions. PET scans have been essential in mapping regions of the brain according to their function and at this point we have a pretty decent understanding, at least in general, about what happens and what is processed in specific areas of the brain.

So when APD patients undergo pet scans and you ask them to reflect on moral and ethical questions or dilemmas, something very fascinating is found and it is low activity in what is called the prefrontal cortex, which is this area of ​​the brain. here. So it looks like this is the anterior portion and we go to the posterior side. It is a right hemisphere of the brain. So, you see low activity in the prefrontal cortex and then in the limbic system and we cannot see the limbic system because it is embedded in this hemisphere, but it contains structures like the amygdala or the hippocampus.

But when you ask these patients to say - let's say give them a specific scenario - maybe a child, a young child tragically loses both parents in a horrible car accident and the child survives and cries and is obviously devastated by this, it isn't true? 99% of the people you would expect to see the areasresponsible for morality and empathy are illuminated and those areas will be here. So if I turn around, so if you look, you'll see this line here. Break down what I'm going to circle here. This is called the Anterior Singular Cortex and then this region here is called the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex.

Now, both areas are strongly linked to morality and empathy. And so when you put them through these kinds of moral and ethical dilemmas, what you see is that they are completely underactive to the point that you can argue that they don't feel empathy or that if they do, it's at such an extraordinarily small level that We don't know... we don't know how to do it right and it also means that your moral compass is completely out of whack. Which is just terrifying and fascinating. Now, this area of ​​the brain here is called the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and it is the last area of ​​the brain to develop in humans.

Some of you may have heard that the brain does not fully mature until age 25. Well, we're talking specifically about the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or DLPFC. Now the DLPFC is responsible for making rational decisions. You can think of it as your risk assessment center. It's the lens through which you see the world, right? Rational decisions are made based on the connections that are made in this area and the reason why this is so - it is delayed in its maturation is because it takes a man about 25 years and again, there is room for maneuver with this, to commit mistakes, learning from role models, teachers, parents, TV shows, whatever, about the differences between right and wrong or what is a smart or not smart decision and being able to do it from feedback from others areas.

So the anterior cingulate, the posterior cingulate, the dorsum, which is like the DLPFC, will come from the ventromedial PFC or, you know, the orbital frontal cortex. All of these different regions of the brain, if I can hold them up correctly for you to see, will give feedback to that DLPFC that says, "Hey, this is how we respond to these moral and ethical questions." Well, if you remember when the brain develops in the womb and serotonin is responsible for that, well, with psychopaths, it is reduced and what we found is that if these areas that go to the DLPFC, which transmits information, are not active, that's going to change the way synapses form in this region.

This means that, for a psychopath, his behavior is not irrational. It is completely rational because its rational center was formed around the irrational. That's why they don't feel bad. That's why they don't do it: they don't mind that situation in which the child loses his parents. It doesn't bother them when they do something that the rest of us say, "you can't do that." They steal something or hurt someone or just act in a way that would make the rest of us feel morally and ethically compromised, they don't do it because their brain literally processes information differently than it would for you or me, but again, though, None of this is a foregone conclusion and, as I mentioned before, it takes something on top of all that to truly create psychopathy, doesn't it?

We built the House of Cards. This is very unstable in many cases, but it doesn't necessarily mean that everything will fall apart. For it to fall apart, you need environmental conditions that reinforce it, that really cause that chaos, and that happens through a childhood traumatic experience. Again, it could be like, you know, parental abuse. It could be sexual abuse, right? Not just emotional abuse, but sexual abuse, but it could also be that you just see horrible things, right? If you have a young child who witnesses some horrible war crimes, that may also be enough to start tipping the scales toward psychopathy, but this is also where we can bring sociopathy back into the equation, because we all know that trauma Any age can be devastating, but childhood trauma is especially devastating, because again, all the different areas of the prefrontal cortex are, you know, sending a to the DLPFC.

Well, even if you don't have that MAOA-L gene, right? Even if you don't have altered brain structures, but you're young enough and you're still growing or experiencing that childhood trauma, it may be enough to change that DLPFC to cause abnormalities in those other areas where they are. Re low functioning. So, you get essentially the same kind of result that you got with psychopathy, but this time it's based almost exclusively on the environment. Considering that both psychopaths and sociopaths belong to antisocial personality disorder, it makes a lot of sense that they would share several behaviors and one of them would be a complete lack of empathy.

In most cases it is physically impossible for you to put yourself in someone else's shoes, right? Seeing it through their eyes and feeling how they feel, but then they also have little to no anxiety, right? In the same way we have anxiety. So, I mean, I don't know about you, but I get anxious all the time about little things, little things that might come up or what I have to do later or what I have to do now, but for them, it's not going to be. exactly the same, right? And again, there's a bit of a spectrum here, but in many cases they just don't feel anxious.

Their heartbeats don't speed up like yours and mine would. So it actually goes hand in hand with their risk assessment, because if they're not feeling anxious, they're more likely to take risks and when you combine that with a lack of empathy, it's just a perfect storm, right? It just creates a disturbing type of individual, because then they can steal something or hurt someone and not feel bad about it, even though there's a high risk, but the thing is, when they take those risks, they're still going to follow through. Arrive. adrenalin. They will receive more doses of dopamine.

So, it's going to help them feel alive, which then starts to, you know, get the ball rolling to create this out of control behavior, especially when we're talking about sociopaths like that, but they... We're also going to have and share the pleasure. about having power over others and, again, it makes a lot of sense, especially when you combine it with a lack of anxiety and empathy, right? Because then it will be easier for them to succeed in many ways, especially when it comes to psychopaths and we'll talk about that shortly, but the other - and in my opinion, probably the most disturbing thing about them being a part of is a lack of remorse, TRUE?

They don't feel guilt or shame. So it's not just that they couldn't empathize and they weren't anxious and they enjoyed the power, once they know the end result of what they did, they don't feel bad about it, right? They're not like sitting there and losing sleep, they don't really think about it. Someone can cry in front of them and make a complete emotional mess of what they did to them and it's like, well, it's just part of the game. Now, despite their similarities, there will obviously be differences, especially considering that we took the time to say that they are psychopaths and sociopaths.

So psychopaths tend to be much more calculating, right? They are able to pre-plan fraud and manipulation, aren't they? They are not going to be so reactionary. They are able to blend in with those around them. They can observe the behavior of others and say, "Oh, that's how people behave." I should probably act like this, right? Because if I act different, people get scared or they don't like it. So, okay, I'm going to chime in, okay? So, they're not anxious about it or anything, they can just blend in. They will usually be intelligent, charming and can be ruthlessly cunning.

Now, despite what you may have heard in pop culture, being a psychopath doesn't mean you're on a one-way trip to becoming a serial killer or a grim reaper, and a grim reaper will be a pro. doctor who deliberately kills someone. their patients. Instead, psychopaths tend to gravitate toward positions of power, don't they? So sometimes they can become psychopathic serial killers, but many other times they can become lawyers, they can become just doctors and they may not be an angel of death, but they enjoy that position of power and manipulation and everything that they can. They would do well, but you'll also see them become military members, you'll see them become police officers, and they may become outstanding businessmen or women, right?

CEOs: I forget the exact statistics, but there are a lot of CEOs who are actually psychopaths and it makes a lot of sense if you think about it, right? If you lack empathy, you are not anxious, you are capable of taking risks. If you are able to guide them in the right direction, this is a powerful individual. Of course, he's also someone you don't want to cross because he doesn't care about revenge. They don't mind ruining you and they won't feel bad about it, right? That's what makes psychopaths so different from sociopaths is the fact that, really, for me it comes down to their ability to plan and not be reactionary, and that's what happens to sociopaths.

They're a lot more abrasive than psychopaths will be, right? They are much more reactionary. They don't like it, they don't even think about doing it, going unnoticed. Instead, they'll just do things for the sake of doing them, right? These are the kind of people who don't mind showing that they are cruel, who don't mind showing that they are manipulative, right? They are the type of person who will lock a car just to lock a car. You don't even have to do anything to them, they'll just do it and it doesn't bother them. They don't feel bad about it.

It's really just this experimentation. It's like, well, you can ask a sociopath "why did you do that?" And they just say, "I wanted to see what would happen." And if you tell them what happens, you know, the damage or the carnage that followed, they just don't care, right? So you can almost think that might be a terrible analogy and it's like I'm not going to do it, but I'm just going to say it. I tend to think of sociopaths almost like a mad dog and then I tend to think of psychopaths more like a trained dog than a trained attack dog, right?

They are both capable of obscene destruction, but the way they do it will be completely different and that, to me, is what makes them so terrifying, but only in their own way. So is there anything that can be done to treat these people? The sad and unfortunate answer is probably no, at least given current technology and the current state of medicine. I mean, the fact is that you are dealing with a hardware problem, right? You're dealing with literal changes in the genetic sequence and the physical brain itself, even with sociopathy, right? Because emotional trauma will literally change areas of the brain: the way synapses communicate with each other.

The pattern with which they communicate with each other. So what we're talking about here is brain plasticity issues combined with genetic deficiencies, and again, MAOA is not the only gene that we've found to correlate with psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. There are other genes. So it's like we have to figure out which of those genes are read, in what order, and how they are related. I mean, it's not that simple. I wish it were that simple, especially with similar genetic engineering (and I mentioned this before), like CRISPR-type technologies, that we could just go in there and change the genes and boom, you fixed it.

But again we have the aspect of emotional trauma. Even if we get to a point where we can do genetic engineering and really solve that underlying problem, we still have the emotional trauma aspect. Bad things happen, you know? But to me, it's like there's anything we can do as a society and even cross cultures around the world, and that's a difficult task. I know what I'm going to say, believe me, I know what I'm going to say, these are better parents. These are better role models. And look, I'm a father and when you look at this, I'll probably have my second child.

Currently my wife is pregnant. She is currently full term. Her due date is next week with our second child. Um, for me it's like being a parent is one of the greatest joys, if not the greatest joy of my entire life, and it's also easily the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Um, you know, I have a four-year-old son and then we're having this newborn and it's like every day is a lesson in my own insecurities and problems that I have to deal with because it's so easy to yell. It's easy to want to get angry.

It's easy to just want to say, do it because I want you to do it and that's what I like to think of as a decent parent. I like to think I'm doing no harm, but it's like it's an imperfect process and I can see how it could get out of control. I think any parent can understand this, because if you've never dealt with an angry three-year-old, well, they are some of the rudest people out there. They are just obscenely crazy. In fact, I should mention it. When antisocial personality disorder is diagnosed, they can't even diagnose it before the age of 18 and some psychologists and psychiatrists want to take it even further and that's because children andTeenagers actually show a lot of antisocial traits, right?

Children are ridiculous. They do all kinds of things. They Test limits, push boundaries, they drive you crazy in many ways, right? They are the most beautiful people that have ever walked the earth, but they are also crazy people and because of that, being able to control yourself is one of the hardest things and what I have learned and will continue to learn and I know that it only gets harder and it will be different. As the years go by, you know, I just have to continue to be the best that I can be and I understand that it's a difficult thing; in fact, I would almost say it is impossible for all parents. so that everyone is on the same page where "hey, we're all going to do better." But unfortunately I think it needs to happen or at least make significant progress because, again, even if the underlying genetic susceptibility is treated, there is still the emotional aspect.

So for me, one of the things that I think about personally and I think about this all the time is like, “okay, how can you be a better parent?” and for me, time and time again, everything is based on opinions, right? You can completely disagree with everything I say now. But for me, the way I tend to approach it is that I want to try to develop more rationality in my child and within children and that's a kind of logical behavior, right? It's yes, this and that, right? If you do that, then it will happen and you know, it's like I'm not trying to say that emotions should be completely eliminated because I think emotions are essential to being human, but I also think that if we react less and respond more well. , good?

We listen to them and try to say, okay, well, based on this, we're going to do this. You develop in them that type of logical and rational decision making. I think this will be the best thing to help us get out of this. Again, this is all based on opinion. It's all subjective, but that's why I'm a big fan of the logical type stuff and it's also why I'm a big fan of today's video sponsor, Brilliant. Now, I want to make it perfectly clear: Brilliant in no way claims that its content will help resolve antisocial personality and parenting disorder.

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So make sure you check them out, but thanks for hanging out with me with this video. I really appreciate it. Hopefully it wasn't too scary and you learn something fun and exciting that you can scare other people in your life, but thanks for watching. See you in the next video.