Confessions of a Prosocial Psychopath

Many neuroscientists have been howling about the media coverage surrounding a new book written by UC Irvine Professor Emeritus, Dr. James H. Fallon. This is because unbeknownst to himself for 58 years (or apparently to anyone else, for that matter), he was secretly a psychopath. How did he finally discover this? Did he complete the Psychopathy Checklist and score over 30?No.Instead, he diagnosed himself as a psychopath on the basis of his PET scan.Compared to a control brain (top), neuroscientist James Fallon’s brain (bottom) shows significantly decreased activity in areas of the frontal lobe linked to empathy and morality—anatomical patterns that have been linked with psychopathic behavior. Image via James Fallon in The Smithsonian.This is a case of reverse inference, assuming that a certain pattern of brain activity indicates a particular behavioral state (or in this case, a specific psychiatric diagnosis). While it may be true at the group level that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is decreased in psychopaths, it's not possible to diagnose an individual on this basis (at least not with our current state of knowledge).In fact, Fallon himself initially doubted the ugly possibility that he's lacking in empathy, morality and self-control:In [his book], Fallon seeks to reconcile how he—a happily married family man—could demonstrate the same anatomical patterns that marked the minds of serial killers.“I’ve never killed anybody, or raped anyone,” h...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Neurologists Source Type: blogs