Exploring the mind of a killer
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0:00 - 0:03I'm a neuroscientist, a professor at the University of California.
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0:03 - 0:06And over the past 35 years,
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0:06 - 0:08I've studied behavior
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0:08 - 0:11on the basis of everything from genes
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0:11 - 0:13through neurotransmitters, dopamine, things like that,
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0:13 - 0:15all the way through circuit analysis.
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0:15 - 0:17So that's what I normally do.
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0:17 - 0:19But then, for some reason,
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0:19 - 0:21I got into something else, just recently.
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0:21 - 0:24And it all grew out of one of my colleagues asking me
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0:24 - 0:26to analyze a bunch of brains
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0:26 - 0:28of psychopathic killers.
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0:28 - 0:31And so this would be the typical talk I would give.
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0:31 - 0:34And the question is, "How do you end up with a psychopathic killer?"
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0:34 - 0:36What I mean by psychopathic killer
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0:36 - 0:38are these people, these types of people.
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0:38 - 0:40And so some of the brains that I've studied
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0:40 - 0:42are people you know about.
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0:42 - 0:44When I get the brains I don't know what I'm looking at.
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0:44 - 0:46It's blind experiments. They also gave me normal people and everything.
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0:46 - 0:48So I've looked at about 70 of these.
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0:48 - 0:51And what came up was a number of pieces of data.
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0:51 - 0:54So we look at these sorts of things theoretically,
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0:54 - 0:56on the basis of genetics,
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0:56 - 0:59and brain damage, and interaction with environment,
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0:59 - 1:01and exactly how that machine works.
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1:01 - 1:03So we're interested in exactly where in the brain,
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1:03 - 1:05and what's the most important part of the brain.
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1:05 - 1:08So we've been looking at this:
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1:08 - 1:10the interaction of genes,
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1:10 - 1:12what's called epigenetic effects,
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1:12 - 1:14brain damage, and environment,
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1:14 - 1:16and how these are tied together.
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1:16 - 1:18And how you end up with a psychopath, and a killer,
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1:18 - 1:21depends on exactly when the damage occurs.
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1:21 - 1:24It's really a very precisely timed thing.
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1:24 - 1:26You get different kinds of psychopaths.
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1:26 - 1:29So we're going along with this. And here's, just to give you the pattern.
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1:29 - 1:32The pattern is that those people, every one of them I looked at,
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1:32 - 1:35who was a murderer, and was a serial killer,
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1:35 - 1:37had damage to their orbital cortex,
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1:37 - 1:39which is right above the eyes, the orbits,
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1:39 - 1:41and also the interior part of the temporal lobe.
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1:41 - 1:43So there is the pattern that every one of them had,
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1:43 - 1:45but they all were a little different too.
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1:45 - 1:47They had other sorts of brain damage.
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1:47 - 1:49A key thing is that
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1:49 - 1:52the major violence genes,
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1:52 - 1:55it's called the MAO-A gene.
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1:55 - 1:59And there is a variant of this gene that is in the normal population.
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1:59 - 2:02Some of you have this. And it's sex-linked.
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2:02 - 2:04It's on the X chromosome. And so in this way
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2:04 - 2:07you can only get it from your mother.
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2:07 - 2:11And in fact this is probably why mostly men, boys,
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2:11 - 2:13are psychopathic killers,
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2:13 - 2:15or are very aggressive.
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2:15 - 2:18Because a daughter can get one X from the father,
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2:18 - 2:20one X from the mother, it's kind of diluted out.
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2:20 - 2:22But for a son, he can only get
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2:22 - 2:24the X chromosome from his mother.
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2:24 - 2:27So this is how it's passed from mother to son.
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2:27 - 2:31And it has to do with too much brain serotonin during development,
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2:31 - 2:33which is kind of interesting because serotonin
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2:33 - 2:36is supposed to make you calm and relaxed.
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2:36 - 2:39But if you have this gene, in utero
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2:39 - 2:41your brain is bathed in this,
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2:41 - 2:43so your whole brain becomes insensitive to serotonin,
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2:43 - 2:46so it doesn't work later on in life.
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2:46 - 2:49And I'd given this one talk in Israel,
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2:49 - 2:51just this past year.
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2:51 - 2:53And it does have some consequences.
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2:53 - 2:55Theoretically what this means
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2:55 - 2:58is that in order to express this gene,
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2:58 - 3:00in a violent way,
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3:00 - 3:02very early on, before puberty,
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3:02 - 3:05you have to be involved in something that is really traumatic --
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3:05 - 3:07not a little stress, not being spanked or something,
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3:07 - 3:09but really seeing violence,
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3:09 - 3:11or being involved in it, in 3D.
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3:11 - 3:13Right? That's how the mirror neuron system works.
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3:13 - 3:16And so, if you have that gene,
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3:16 - 3:19and you see a lot of violence
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3:19 - 3:21in a certain situation,
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3:21 - 3:24this is the recipe for disaster, absolute disaster.
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3:24 - 3:27And what I think might happen in these areas of the world,
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3:27 - 3:30where we have constant violence,
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3:30 - 3:33you end up having generations of kids
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3:33 - 3:35that are seeing all this violence.
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3:35 - 3:38And if I was a young girl, somewhere in a violent area,
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3:38 - 3:40you know, a 14 year old, and I want to find a mate,
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3:40 - 3:43I'd find some tough guy, right, to protect me.
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3:43 - 3:47Well what the problem is this tends to concentrate these genes.
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3:47 - 3:49And now the boys and the girls get them.
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3:49 - 3:51So I think after several generations,
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3:51 - 3:54and here is the idea, we really have a tinderbox.
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3:54 - 3:56So that was the idea.
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3:56 - 3:58But then my mother said to me, "I hear you've been going around talking
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3:58 - 4:01about psychopathic killers.
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4:01 - 4:04And you're talking as if you come from a normal family."
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4:04 - 4:06I said, "What the hell are you talking about?"
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4:06 - 4:09She then told me about our own family tree.
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4:09 - 4:11Now she blamed this on my father's side, of course.
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4:11 - 4:15This was one of these cases, because she has no violence in her background,
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4:15 - 4:17but my father did.
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4:17 - 4:19Well she said, "There is good news and bad news.
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4:19 - 4:22One of your cousins is Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell university.
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4:22 - 4:25But the bad news is that your cousin is also Lizzie Borden.
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4:25 - 4:32Now I said, "Okay, so what? We have Lizzie."
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4:32 - 4:34She goes, "No it gets worse, read this book."
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4:34 - 4:36And here is this "Killed Strangely," and it's this historical book.
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4:36 - 4:38And the first murder
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4:38 - 4:40of a mother by a son
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4:40 - 4:43was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
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4:43 - 4:46Okay, so that's the first case of matricide.
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4:46 - 4:49And that book is very interesting. Because it's about witch trials,
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4:49 - 4:51and how people thought back then.
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4:51 - 4:53But it doesn't stop there.
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4:53 - 4:56There were seven more men, on my father's side,
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4:56 - 5:00starting then, Cornells, that were all murderers.
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5:00 - 5:03Okay, now this gives one a little pause.
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5:03 - 5:05(Laughter)
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5:05 - 5:07Because my father himself,
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5:07 - 5:09and my three uncles, in World War II,
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5:09 - 5:12were all conscientious objectors, all pussycats.
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5:12 - 5:14But every once in a while, like Lizzie Borden, like three times a century,
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5:14 - 5:16and we're kind of due.
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5:16 - 5:19(Laughter)
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5:19 - 5:21So the moral of the story is:
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5:21 - 5:23people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
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5:23 - 5:26But more likely is this.
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5:26 - 5:30(Laughter)
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5:30 - 5:33And we had to take action. Now our kids found out about it.
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5:33 - 5:35And they all seemed to be OK.
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5:35 - 5:38But our grandkids are going to be kind of concerned here.
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5:38 - 5:41So what we've done is I've started to do PET scans
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5:41 - 5:43of everybody in the family.
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5:43 - 5:44(Laughter)
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5:44 - 5:47We started to do PET scans, EEGs and genetic analysis
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5:47 - 5:49to see where the bad news is.
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5:49 - 5:51Now the only person -- it turns out
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5:51 - 5:54one son and one daughter, siblings,
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5:54 - 5:56didn't get along and their patterns are exactly the same.
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5:56 - 5:59They have the same brain, and the same EEG.
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5:59 - 6:02And now they are close as can be.
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6:02 - 6:04But there's gonna be bad news somewhere.
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6:04 - 6:06And we don't know where it's going to pop up.
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6:06 - 6:08So that's my talk.
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6:08 - 6:09(Laughter)
- Title:
- Exploring the mind of a killer
- Speaker:
- Jim Fallon
- Description:
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Psychopathic killers are the basis for some must-watch TV, but what really makes them tick? Neuroscientist Jim Fallon talks about brain scans and genetic analysis that may uncover the rotten wiring in the nature (and nurture) of murderers. In a too-strange-for-fiction twist, he shares a fascinating family history that makes his work chillingly personal.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 06:11
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