Inside the Brain of a Psychopath

Psychopaths literally have a different brain than you or I do. Unless, of course, you are a psychopath. In which case, this video will hopefully give you some insight as to what's going on with your brain. But for me, it's always been a morbid curiosity with psychopathy. I mean, they're like the edge cases of humanity. Why are they incapable of empathy? Why are they so prone to risk-taking, even if that risk almost comes with a guaranteed death sentence or lifetime imprisonment? Why are so many CEOs psychopaths? What's the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? And is there even a potential treatment for psychopathy, or are we just doomed to live in fear for the rest of eternity from these individuals? It's going to be a slightly terrifying one. Let's do this.

There is no official diagnosis of psychopath or sociopath. Instead, these are terms that the public or professionals even will use to just communicate the behavioral symptoms that someone is experiencing. In reality, both psychopathy and sociopathy belong to what's known as anti-social personality disorder, or APD. Now, APD is one of four personality disorders that belong to what's called cluster B personality disorders. The other three are going to be borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and histrionic personality disorder. Now, well, none of those are desirable disorders to have by any stretch of the imagination, APD is commonly seen or believed to be the worst among them. And that's because APD can have some of the traits that are in those other disorders, but still suffer from personality disorder. So, for example, a sociopath can be impulsive, which is also what someone with borderline personality disorder would display. But you wouldn't say that a sociopath suffers from borderline personality disorder. Instead, they would just share borderline traits, but they still suffer from antisocial personality disorder.

Now, APD can actually manifest in different individuals differently. This is what we're really getting at 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 along. But it's probably easiest for you to think of psychopathy as being the end result or product of physical issues combined with environmental problems. While sociopathy is going to be almost purely a product of environmental conditions. So, in other words, a psychopath is actually born with physical issues with their nervous system, and then on top of that, you pile on environmental conditions such as child trauma. Sociopath, on the other hand, is going to be born with an essentially a normal functioning nervous system, but due to childhood trauma or maltreatment, that is going to then alter their nervous system. So that's, pro, I mean, that's an oversimplification, which is why it's really best to think of them as just suffering from antisocial personality disorder. But for our purposes, that should work just fine.

Now, to understand what's physically going on with the brain of a psychopath, we first need to discuss a very famous neurotransmitter called serotonin. Now, serotonin is a monoamine neurotransmitter or neuromodulator. Essentially, all that means is that when it's released, it will cause or stop a signal to occur, or it can actually change how another signal is working. Now, serotonin is widely distributed throughout the body. In fact, you find the most of it, surprisingly, in the digestive tract. But with the brain, so let me grab the brain here and turn this around. Serotonin is going to be produced here in the brain stem, and there are going to be groups of nuclei called the rafi nuclei, and they're going to produce serotonin, and then they're going to have neuronal projections that are going to take the serotonin pretty much throughout the entirety of the brain.

When serotonin is released at the synapse, and the synapse is actually just the location where two or more neurons are communicating with one another, it's actually going to leave what's called the presynaptic neuron first. And the presynaptic neuron is just the first neuron. From there, the serotonin will go into a space between the neurons called the synaptic cleft. Because, interestingly, neurons are not actually, at least at the synaptic location, they're not in contact with one another. Instead, there's a space so that chemistry can occur in those gaps. So serotonin will leave that presynaptic neuron, go into the synaptic cleft, and then it's going to bind to receptors on that secondary neuron called the postsynaptic neuron. And depending on the location, the type of neuron, and several other factors, serotonin's going to either initiate something, it's going to inhibit something, or it's going to alter some kind of activity within that synapse.

So now that the synapses have communicated with serotonin, something needs to happen to the serotonin. So much of that serotonin will actually be reabsorbed back into that presynaptic neuron. We call this serotonin reuptake. But not all of it. Some of it will actually remain inside of the synaptic cleft, but it needs to leave too. So what the body will do is break it down, and it does that with an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A, or MAOA for short. And so what ends up happening is this combination of reuptake and breakdown. And what that does is it just takes serotonin out of the synapse temporarily. Again, temporarily, because what will then happen is, well, once the synapse needs to fire again and serotonin needs to be released, then you can get the proper response because you know how much serotonin is going to be present.

The activity of this enzyme is coded by a sequence of DNA called the MAOA gene, which is located on an X chromosome. Now, there can be different versions or alleles or variants of this gene. You could have what's called MAOH or MAOAL. And all that means is that you have high-end, uh, some high activity in the gene or low activity in the gene, at least when you compare it to a normal functioning MAO gene. The reason I'm bringing this up is because researchers have discovered that most, if not all, psychopaths have the low functioning variant of the MAOA gene. And in some especially rare cases, there have been entire family lines that have the gene completely knocked out, meaning they don't break down serotonin at the synapse at all.

Now, some of you may be wondering why this is an issue at all. I mean, serotonin is commonly described as the happy neurotransmitter. So in that case, it would suggest that having more of it would make you better off or happier, not worse. I mean, just look at SSRIs, for example. An SSRI stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and these are the go-to antidepressants for many clinicians out there. And they essentially function by limiting how much serotonin is reabsorbed into that presynaptic neuron. Although maybe I shouldn't actually say it that way, because we don't have a crystal clear understanding of exactly how SSRIs work. What we do know is that they have an effect on serotonin, and they tend to improve symptoms of depression. But this is where many go wrong in their assumptions surrounding brain chemistry. Neurotransmitters aren't solely responsible for anything. Dopamine is not responsible for joy or pleasure, and serotonin isn't responsible for happiness. Instead, they play roles in these behaviors and emotions, right? They work with other hormones and other neurotransmitters, and it's this complex dance. I often tell my students to think of brain chemistry and neurotransmission similar to an orchestra or a symphony, right? You may enjoy the violin, but you don't want to hear only the violin when you're listening to an orchestra or a symphony. Instead, you want the violin to come in at the right time, with the right cadence, with the right loudness, right? There are all these instruments that are there to come in at the right time and then the right way, and all of it together creates an experience. That is the best way to think about neurotransmission and brain chemistry as a whole. So instead of saying serotonin is responsible for happiness, you really should be saying that serotonin is is playing a role in happiness, as well as it's playing a role in just overall emotion and behaviors.

Now, you may be thinking, Eureka! We found it. This is this is the gene that's responsible for aggression. All we gotta do is some genetic engineering, cut it out, throw it away, and boom, we have no more psychopathic serial killers. That would be awesome. But unfortunately, it's just not that way. It's not that simple. And that's because aggression, as is all behavior and emotions, is complex. So simply having the presence of this low activity variant doesn't equate to have been aggressive or being psychopathic. Instead, it's what we call a predictor of psychopathy, a predictor of aggression. Serotonin plays a role in the development of psychopathy. Now, that's the thing. Is serotonin plays the role in the development of the brain in general. If you're to look at the growing brain in utero, so we're talking embryogenesis, and then we're talking fetal development, serotonin is flooding the brain, and it's part of this complex dance to help mature the brain and turn it into what's going to be a fully functioning brain. But it makes you wonder if someone has this MAOAL variant, what could that mean for serotonin breakdown during brain development? What kind of repercussions could that have?

Now, we're going to address that, but real quick, I want to mention something else first. And you may recall me earlier saying that the MAOA gene is located on an X chromosome. So if you remember back to high school biology, females have two X chromosomes, and males have an X and a Y chromosome. We get those chromosomes from our parents, right? You get one from your mother, one from your father. Since females have two X chromosomes, your mother can only give you an X chromosome. But since males have X and Y, your father can give you either or, meaning the father is the one that determines the sex of the child. Well, the vast majority of psychopaths are male. And if you think about it through this chromosomal perspective, this makes perfect sense. Because let's say that a female has the low ac, the low activity variant on one of her X chromosomes. If it's not on the other X, they cancel each other out, meaning that she's not likely to display that aggressive behavior that comes from it. With males, however, they only have one X chromosome. So if they got it, they simply got it. There's no canceling out. This also means that the genetic, uh, uh, indicator, the genetic deficiency, the predictor of aggression, is actually passed down from mother to child. It is possible for females to become psychopathic, and this has happened. It's just so much less likely because you need to have both of those X chromosomes having this, this variant. This is one of the many reasons why researchers got so excited when they first discovered the correlation between MAOA and psychopathy. In fact, it was initially nicknamed the warrior gene because it lined up with so many expectations surrounding psychopathy and aggression. But the problem is, they all, they very quickly discovered that simply having this low activity variant doesn't make you psychopathic and aggressive. You see plenty of people who don't have it. So therefore, it's not a one-to-one correlation. And they realized that means there has to be something else that tips the scales. If this plays a role, even a significant role, it's not enough to get you over the hill. Instead, there has to be something else. And what they've since realized, it's likely a combination of environmental conditions, so how you grow up, as well as brain alterations, likely as a product of the serotonin alterations during brain development.

Now, those that suffer from antisocial personality disorder are notoriously difficult to study. And the reason being is that they don't willingly seek treatment. So unless they're court-ordered, or they're in prison, 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 as being wrong with themselves. But the best data that we do have surrounding psychopathy, sociopathy, and just APD in general, comes from PET scans, which stands for positron emission tomography. And this allows you to actually see the metabolic, uh, or the metabolism of the brain, I guess I should say, just which areas are metabolically active during specific thoughts and emotions. PET scans have been vital to mapping out brain regions based on function, and at this point, we have a pretty decent understanding, at least generally speaking, about what's going on and what's being processed in specific areas of the brain.

So when APD patients undergo PET scans and you ask them to contemplate moral and ethical questions or dilemmas, something very fascinating is found. And that's low activity in what's called the prefrontal cortex, which is this region of the brain right here. So you're looking, like this is the anterior portion, and we're going towards the posterior side. This is the right hemisphere of the cerebrum. So you see low activity in the prefrontal cortex and then in the limbic system. And we can't see the limbic system because it's embedded inside of this hemisphere, but it contains structures like the amygdala or the hippocampus. But when you ask these patients to say, let's, let's say, give them a specific scenario, maybe a child, a young child tragically loses both parents in a horrifying car accident, and the child survives, and they are crying and obviously devastated by this, right? 99% of people, you would expect to see the areas responsible for morality and empathy light up. And those areas are going to be here. So if I turn this around, so this, so if you look, you're going to see like this line here, this is dividing what I'm going to surround here, this is called the anterior cingulate cortex. And then this region here is called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Now, both of these areas are strongly linked to morality and empathy. And so when you put them through these types of moral and ethical dilemmas, what you see is that they're just completely underactive to the point where you can make the argument that they don't feel empathy, or if they do, it's at such an extraordinarily small level that we don't, we don't know how to properly understand it. And that also means that their moral compass is completely skewed, which is just terrifying and fascinating.

Now, this region of the brain right here is called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. And this is the last region of the brain to develop in the human being. So some of you may have heard that the brain doesn't fully mature until you're 25 years old. Well, specifically, we're talking about the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or the DLPFC. Now, the DLPFC is responsible for rational decision-making. You can think of it as your risk assessment center. It's the lens with which you view the world, right? You, you make rational decisions based on the connections made in this area. And the reason why it's so, it's delayed in its maturation is because it takes the human being around 25 years, and again, there's wiggle room with this, to to make mistakes, to learn from role models, teachers, parents, um, television shows, you name it, about the differences between right or wrong, or what's a smart or an intelligent versus an unintelligent decision. And it's able to do this from feedback from other areas. So the anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, the dorso, that's like the, the, you know, the DLPFC is going to come from the ventral medial PFC or, uh, you know, the orbital frontal cortex, all these different regions of the brain, if I can hold it properly for you to see, are going to be giving feedback to that DLPFC saying, hey, this is how we respond to these moral and ethical issues. Well, if you recall, when, when the brain is developing in utero, and serotonin is responsible for that, well, with psychopaths, that's reduced. And so what we find is that if these areas that go to the DLPFC that relay information aren't active, that is going to change how synapses are formed in this region. Meaning, to a psychopath, their behavior is not irrational, it's completely rational because their rational center has formed around the irrational. This is why they don't feel bad. This is why they don't, they're not bothered by that scenario with the child losing their parents. They're not bothered when they do something that the rest of us are like, you can't do that. They steal something or hurt someone or just behave in this way that the rest of us would feel morally and ethically compromised. They don't feel that because their brain is literally processing the, the information differently than it would for you or I.

But again, though, none of this is a foregone conclusion. And as I mentioned earlier, you need something on top of all of this to really create psychopathy, right? We've built the house of cards, it's highly unstable in a lot of cases, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything's going to crumble to the ground. In order for it to crumble, you then need environmental conditions to amplify it, to really cause that devastation. And this occurs through childhood traumatic experience, again. So this could be like, you know, uh, abusive parents, this could be sexual abuse, right? Not just emotional, but sexual abuse. But it also could be to just witness horrifying things, right? If you have a young child who witnesses some horrifying wartime crimes, that can also be enough to start to tip the scales into psychopathy. But this is also where we then can bring sociopathy back into the equation. Because we all know that trauma at any age can be devastating, but childhood trauma is especially devastating because, again, going back, all those different areas of the prefrontal cortex are, you know, sending information to the DLPFC. Well, even if you don't have that MAOAL gene, right? Even if you don't have the altered brain structures, but you're young enough and you still grow up or experience that childhood trauma, that can be enough to shift that DLPFC to cause aberrations in those other areas to where they become low functioning. So you get essentially the sim, the same type of result as you did with psychopathy, but this time it's almost purely based on environment.

Considering that both psychopaths and sociopaths belong to antisocial personality disorder, it makes perfect sense that they're to share several behaviors. And one of those is going to be a complete lack of empathy. It's physically impossible in most cases for them to put themselves in another's shoes, right? To see it through their eyes and feel the way that they are feeling. But then they also have little to no anxiety, right? In the same way that we have anxiety. So, I mean, I don't know you, but I get anxious all the time, just over little things, little things that might be coming up, or I'm going to have to do later, or I have to do right now. But for them, that's not going to be the exact same, right? And again, there's a little bit of a spectrum to this, but in a lot of cases, they just don't feel anxious. Their heart rate is not jumping up when yours and mine would be. So this 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 couple that with a lack of empathy, that is just a perfect storm, right? That just breeds just a disturbing type of individual. Because then they could steal something or hurt someone and not feel bad about it, even though there's a high risk to it. But the thing is, when they take those risks, they're still going to get adrenaline, they're still going to get dopamine hits. So it's going to help to make them feel alive, which then just starts to kind of like get this, you know, the ball rolling to create this out of control behavior, especially when we're talking about sociopaths. But they're also going to have and share an enjoyment of having power over others. And again, that makes perfect sense, especially when you couple it with a lack of anxiety as well as the lack of empathy, right? Because then it's going to be easier for them to become successful in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to psychopaths, we'll talk about that shortly. But the other, in my eyes, probably the most disturbing thing about it that they share is a lack of remorse, right? They don't feel guilt or shame. So it's not just that they couldn't empathize, when they weren't anxious and they enjoyed the power, once they know the end result of what they've done, they don't feel bad about it, right? They're not like sitting there losing sleep, they don't really think about it. Someone could be crying in front of them, complete an emotional wreck about what they have done to them, and it's just like, well, that's just part of play in the game.

Now, despite their similarities, there are obviously going to be differences, especially considering we took the time to say there's psychopaths and sociopaths. So psychopaths, they tend to be far more calculating, right? They are able to plan deceits and manipulation in advance, right? They're not going to be nearly as reactionary. They're capable of blending in with those around them. They can observe the behavior of others and say, oh, that's how that's how people act, I should probably act like that, right? Because when I act my other way, people get scared or they don't like that. So okay, I'm going to blend in like this, right? So they're not anxious about it or anything, they're just able to kind of fly under the radar. Typically, they're going to be intelligent, they're going to be charming, and they can be ruthlessly cunning.

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 an angel of death. And an angel of death is going to be a medical professional who purposely kills their patients. Instead, psychopaths tend to gravitate towards positions of power, right? So sometimes they can become psychopathic serial killers, but a lot of other times they may become a lawyer, they may become just a doctor, and they may not be an angel of death, but they enjoy that position of power and manipulation and everything they can do with it. But you're also going to see them become military members, you're going to see them become police officers, and they can make outstanding businessmen or businesswomen, right? CEOs. I forget the exact statistics, but there is a high amount of CEOs that are actually psychopathic. And it makes perfect sense when you think about it, right? When you have a lack of empathy, you're not anxious, you're able to take risks. If you're able to steer those in the right direction, that is a potent individual. It's also someone you don't want to cross, obviously, because they don't mind getting 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 I really, to me, it comes down to their ability to plan and not be reactionary.

And that's the thing with sociopaths. They are far more abrasive than psychopaths are going to be, right? They're far more reactionary. They don't like to or really think even to fly under the radar. Instead, they're just going to do things to do them, right? These are the type of people that don't mind showing that they're cruel, that don't mind showing that they're manipulating, right? They're the type of person who would key a car just to key a car. You don't have to do anything to them, they're just going to do it, and it doesn't bother them. They don't feel bad about it. It's really just this experimentation. They're just like, well, you could ask a sociopath, why did you do this? And it's just like, I wanted to see what would happen. And when you tell them what happened, you know, the damages or, you know, the carnage that ensued, they just don't care, right? So you can think of almost like, um, this is, this is, this may be a terrible analogy, and it's like, I don't mean to, but I'm just going to say it. I tend to think of sociopaths almost like a rabid dog, and then I tend to think of psychopaths as being more of a trained dog, that's a trained attack dog, right? Both are capable of just obscene destruction, but the way, the method they go about it is going to be completely different. And that, to me, is what makes them so scary, but in just their own unique ways.

So, is there anything that can be done to treat these individuals? Um, the sad and unfortunate answer is likely no, at least given current technology and the current state of medicine. I mean, the fact is, you're dealing with a hardware problem, right? You're dealing with literal changes in the genetic sequencing and the physical brain itself. Even with sociopathy, right? Because emotional trauma will literally change the areas of the brain, the way the 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 isn't the only gene that we've found that correlates with psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. There are other genes. So then it's like, we have to figure out which of those genes is being read, in which order, how do they relate? I mean, it's not as simple. I wish it was as simple, especially with like, and I mentioned this earlier, genetic engineering, like CRISPR type technologies, that we could just go in there and change the genes and boom, you fixed it. But again, you then have the emotional trauma aspect. Even if we do get to that point where we can do genetic engineering and actually fix that underlying issue, we still have the emotional trauma aspect. Bad things happen, you know?

But to me, it's like, if there's anything that we could do as a society, and even like cross-culturally, across the world, and this is a tall order, I know what I'm about to say, trust me, I know what I'm about to say. It's be better parents. It's be better role models. And look, I, I'm a parent. And by the time you watch this, I'll likely have my second child, right? My wife is pregnant, she is full term at this moment, her due date is next week with our second child. Um, to me, it's like parenting is one of the greatest joys, if not the greatest joy in my entire life. And it's also easily the most difficult thing I've ever had to do. Um, you know, I have a four-year-old, and then we're going to have this newborn. And it's like, every day is a lesson on my own insecurities and issues that I need to get over 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 this because I want you to do it. And it's like, I like to think of myself as a decent parent. I like to think of myself as not doing any damage. But it's like, it's an imperfect process. And I can see how it can get out of control. I think any parent can understand that. Because if you've never dealt with a tantruming three-year-old, all right, they are some of the rudest people alive. They are just obscenely insane. In fact, I actually should mention this, when you're diagnosing antisocial personality disorder, they can't even diagnose it under the age of 18. And some psychologists and psychiatrists want to push that out even farther. And that's because children and teenagers actually display many antisocial traits, right? Kids are ridiculous. They do all sorts of stuff. They test boundaries, push boundaries, they, they drive you nuts in a lot of ways, right? The most beautiful people that's ever walked the earth, but they are crazy people too. And so being able to control yourself is one of the most difficult things. And what I've been learning, and I'm going to continue to learn, and I know it's only going to get harder, and it's going to be different as the years go on, is that, you know, I just got to continue to be the best I can possibly be. And I understand that that is a difficult thing, actually, I would argue almost impossible to get every parent in the entire world on the same page where, hey, we're all going to just, we're going to do better. But unfortunately, I think that's what needs to happen. And or at least make significant strides. Because again, even if you treat the underlying genetic susceptibilities, you still have the emotional aspect.

So to me, it's like, one of the things I personally think about, and I think about this all the time, is like, okay, well, how can you be a better parent? And for me, again, this is all, this is all opinion-based, right? You could completely disagree with all of what I'm saying right now. But to me, the way I tend to approach it is, I want to try and develop more rationality within my child and within the children. And that's just logic type behavior, right? It's, if this, then that, right? If you do this, then this will happen. And, you know, it's like, I'm not trying to say emotion should be completely removed, because I think emotion is essential to being a human being. But I also think that if we react less, and instead respond more, right? We listen to them, and we try to be like, okay, well, based on this, we're going to do this. You develop those types of logical, um, just rational decision-making in them. I think that's going to be the best thing to help try and steer us out of this. Again, this is all opinion-based, this is all subjective. But that's why I'm just a huge fan of logic type things. And it's also why I'm a huge fan of the sponsor of today's video, Brilliant.

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But thanks for hanging out with me with this video. I really appreciate it. Hopefully, it wasn't too fear-inducing, and you learned something fun and exciting that you can go scare other people in your life. But thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.

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