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The Surprising Story of Dr. James Fallon
Prof. James Fallon, a celebrated Neuroscientist, dedicated his life to modeling psychopathic behaviors. He had a happy family life with three children and was a self-diagnosed normal human being. Since 1990 he has been part of a project that was scanning the brains of criminals and psychopathic killers through PET scans, trying to make a pattern out of the same.
He also got involved in another project that was doing the genomic analysis of psychopathic killers and criminals.
In 2005, he enrolled himself in a project that was doing a brain scan to understand Alzheimer’s and linking those traits to genomics. He was part of the normal or the control group. The data had been kept anonymized. However, while analyzing the patterns of the normal people, he saw all but one data was normal. This one data had all the traits of an extreme psychopathic killer. And the data belonged to none other than Prof. Fallon.
He was initially in denial mode, as we all become when we discover something horrific about ourselves.
He compiled MRI and brain scan data of dreaded criminals.
Path to Discovery of Psychopathy
Psychopaths showed distinct patterns in the MRI scans. He got fascinated by his discovery and decided to screen himself. To his horror, he discovered that he had none, no empathy. Not only that, his data matched that of dreaded psychopaths. At first, this charming and smiling scientist couldn’t believe the data. He was a family man, a great loving family, children, and great parents.
He then researched his family extensively and questioned his parents to figure out his childhood and ancestry. He learned that many murders had occurred in that family line and that ancestry had many psychopaths.
Then his friends, family, brother, and mother, who had kept this secret, all confirmed that many of his acts, no matter how funny and harmless they appeared, put others’ lives at risk. Many friends confirmed that he appeared devilish at times.
He wrote his journey in a 2013 classic:-
The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain
What to Learn from Dr. Fallon
The key learning from the work of Dr. Fallon is that he carried a genetic line of dreaded murderers and religious Catholics. He discovered that two things essentially determine the neurological map of our brain. The first is the environment, and the second one is the genes. Many of us carry the genes, but they are not expressed till there is an environmental stressor. Once there is abuse and violence, if we carry the violence genes, they are unlocked, and then the pattern of the brain starts getting changed.
Many times, we don’t see symptoms or signs of an illness before it is too late. Screening early does help. However, even then, we often remain in denial. What is super important is to become aware of and accept the problem. Because unless we accept and acknowledge the problem, we will never be able to invest our brain, energy, and resources in solving the problems in the first place.
It is the environment that determines the genetic expression, which then determines the neurological map, which then determines the behavior. Even when our environment is good, the past memory of trauma keeps haunting us like they are happening again and again in real time. This recurrence of trauma is called Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(CPTSD). Even though our environment is good, we often are unaware of the trauma in our brains.
So, the following are the todos when we see some disturbances in our life:
- Admit that the world starts with us, and something wrong in us must put us in an unfavorable world.
- Create a Membership account with us.
Search for self-assessment free tests in Lyfas.
Understand yourself better. - Read our suggestions.
- Read our knowledge base and understand yourself better.
- Make small changes a day.
- Assess yourself.
- Make improvements and take back control of your life.
Wisdom
We can not change our behavior, but we can make peace with our past, see the positive side of life, heal from the trauma slowly, and then make small life changes to turn off the unfavorable genes to finally make a change in our brain patterns.
The only constant and consistent part of life is growth and improvement. Everyone has their limitations and trauma, and illness leads to trauma, and at the same time, all of us have some positive side. We will remain ill if we continue to think about illness, but we will start living if we look at life.
Additional Resources
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