--Original published at Kate's College Blog

For this week’s first impression post, I chose to watch “Exploring the mind of a killer” with Jim Fallon. I chose to watch this talk because I watch shows that solve crime and murder cases. Seeing the behind the scenes of how the brain works in psychopaths and killers made it interesting to watch.

In this talk given by Jim Fallon, a neurologist and professor at University of California, he discusses the genetic analysis and brain scans that can show the brain structure of murderers. He performed blind experiments with normal brains  and brains of psychopaths. He looked at the interaction of genes, brain damage, and the persons interaction with the environment at a certain timing in the persons life. The precise timing that the damage happens causes different psychopaths. All of the psychopaths that he looked at had damage in their orbital cortex and their interior part of their temporal lobe. He also found that the MAO-A gene plays a role in psychopathic killers. The major violence gene, MAO-A, is a sex-linked gene on the X chromosome. This also explains why more men are known to be psychopathic killers and aggressive because they only have one X chromosome while females have two. Another factor he discusses is having too much brain serotonin during development because of the MAO-A gene. Serotonin is supposed to make you calm, but during development if the brain has too much serotonin, it becomes insensitive to it and so it does not work later in life. In order to express this gene in a violent way, the person must have experienced a traumatic event early in life, before puberty. He then talks about his own family tree. on his fathers side, he discovered matricide and seven more men that were murderers. He started to do PET scans, EEG’s, and genetic analysis of everybody in his family. He found that siblings, a son and daughter, did not get along and they had the same scans, and now they are very close.

What I found to be interesting in this talk was the influence of the MAO-A gene. It was intriguing to see how the effects of this gene can cause someone to become violent or aggressive. It also connected the dots of why more psychopathic killers tend to be males because it is a sex linked gene on the X chromosome.

I found the presenter, Jim Fallon, to be trustworthy. He was a neurologist and a professor at the University of California. He had an extensive background of knowledge in behavior and the way the brain works and performed many experiments with reliable conclusions with evidence to back up his findings.

For my research, I would perform a longitudinal research experiment. I would randomly assign an equal amount of boys and girls from a third world country that is battling socioeconomic distress. I would follow the same group of individuals over time from in their mother womb to after puberty. I would see if during development the brain received too much serotonin than the normal rates. I would then follow them through their childhood and see if their MAO-A gene would be influenced by their traumatic childhood experience that would cause the gene to be expressed in a violent way. To draw conclusions, I would have to see if the child is influenced by both of these factors of serotonin and their MAO-A gene and follow them through after puberty to see if their behavior and brain scans have the patterns of a psychopathic killer.

--Original published at *Psych 105*

For this week’s first impression blog post, I chose to watch the TED talk regarding psychopathic killers. The talk was given by a Neuroscientist by the name of Jim Fallon and was dutifully named “Exploring the mind of a killer”. This topic interested me because I have always had an affinity for things that are traditionally seen as scary and freaky. Horror movies and television shows, such as Criminal Minds, have been favorites of mine for the majority of my short life. The inner workings of how the human mind and how it can potentially go so wrong is immensely interesting to me.

Fallon’s talk began with his philosophy of how psychopathic killers are made. According to Fallon, the components of such an individual are a combination of his or her environment, genetics and brain damage. Many of the individuals he gave as examples in the beginning moments of his talk were names that have become media icons for their horrendous and seemingly impossible actions. Ted Bundy, John Gacey, and Charles Manson were a handful of such examples. Fallon found through the use of PET scans that many of these individuals sustained damage to their orbital cortex and their interior temporal lobes. This, in addition to the presence of the MAOA gene, that results in the brain becoming unresponsive to the hormone serotonin. He also exposure to serious violence before the individual reaches puberty can create a situation where psychopathic tendencies can become present. This cycle, as prolonged violence becomes more prevalent, can perpetuate entire generations of damaged brains. Fallon goes on to tell his own family history about how his distant cousins, including Lizzie Borden, were murderers; a particular fact that I found interesting. He then began conducting brain scans on his own family members to see who could have the potential, not necessarily prove, to be a murderer.

I found Dr. Fallon to be trustworthy. The research he conducted on the convicted psychopathic murders were done anonymously, in order to reduce bias. His colleagues requested his input and executive eye to determine differences in the brains. He has been a leader in his field for a number of years and is currently at the University of California.

A study that could be conducted based on the information gathered from Dr. Fallon’s TED talk could be one regarding how the presence of brain damage affects an individual’s tendency to display psychopathic tendencies. Individuals with brain damage can receive PET scans in order to determine which area of the brain is affected. A short survey can be given to each individual to gauge their moral and reasoning abilites. Such data could be compared to those without brain damage. The purpose of the study would be to investigate the correlation between psychopathic tendencies and brain damage, as brain damage does not necessarily mean that the individual would become a psychopath.

--Original published at Anneka's Blog

For today’s First Impression Post, I decided to watch Jim Fallon’s TED talk, “Exploring the Mind of a Killer.” This title intrigued me most versus the various neuroscientific videos as I have always been interested in the mind and mental process of killers. I enjoy watching TV shows, like Blacklist that involve various killers and crimes and the different behaviors and thoughts that go through the killer’s minds.

Fallon discusses his analysis of 70 psychopathic killer’s brains. What he discovered was that a person’s genes, biological-epigentic brain damage, and interaction with one’s environment all played a part in the development of these killers. The timing of the brain damage varies the kind of psychopath that a person becomes. The timing is very specific. These killers also all had varying degrees of orbital cortex and interior temporal lobe damage. What I found most interesting during this TED talk was the appearance of a violence gene called MAO-A that was seen in all 70 brains. This gene is found on the X chromosome can only be given by the mothers. He concludes that this is most likely why most killers or aggressive people are male since they only have the X chromosome from mom and get a Y chromosome from the father while females get the other X chromosome from the father for a XX combination. The irony is that the gene is passed on through an overabundance of serotonin during human development, a neurotransmitter than relaxes the body. The overabundance makes the body immune to it. For this gene to be seen violently at pre-adolescence, one needs to be exposed to extremely traumatic events. Fallon also goes into his own personal history where there nine people from his father’s side that were killers. He has PET scanned his family to analyze their brain patterns.

I found Jim Fallon trustworthy and his presentation creditable. He mentioned in the beginning of his talk that he was a Neuroscientist for 35 years (now 44 years as this was recorded in 2009) a professor at the University of California. He has researched genes, neurotransmitters, dopamine, and circuit analysis. The analysis of the brains was also done blindly. He was given the psychopathic killer and normal brains to analyze without knowing which was which. One untrustworthy observation I made was that the killers that were presented in his slide show-Albert Fish, David Berkowitz, and Aileen Wuornos to name a few-were all Americans. I do not know the other 62 brains that were analyzed and if they were from other countries. If the brains analyzed were all Americans, it can’t be generalized to all killers per say.

My own research idea, based off this information, is to find the effects of lower levels of serotonin during development as an overabundance passes MAO-A. I would take a random sample of people from various places with lower levels in serotonin and normal levels of serotonin and conduct a longitudinal research. I would take PET scans at various age stages in the groups and compare results. I would also analyze the areas that serotonin affects. Lastly, at each check in, the group of people would undergo a stress related activity and the person’s behavior, heart rate, and the body’s calming mechanisms would be monitored. This will analyze the body’s ability to calm and relax a person. It will be hard to fully find cause-and-effect as I cannot purposely lower a person’s serotonin level during development.

--Original published at Emily Garvin's Psych Blog

I chose to watch the TED talk entitled “Exploring the mind of a killer”. I chose this talk because it seemed interesting to me. After watching crime shows like criminal minds and NCIS I often wonder what posses people to commit these unfathomable acts of violence.  I was curious to see if  psychopathic killers had similar brain structures or chemical imbalances which contributed to their illogical thinking.

Jim Fallon, a professor of neuroscience, focuses on murder’s brain patterns and presents possible theories that could explain why murders do not think like an average person. He describes a defect in the orbital cortex that is common among killers. In addition to oddities in the cerebral cortex Fallon suggests that the sex-linked MAO-A gene is more prevalent among killers. This would explain why males tend to be killers since the MAO-A gene is sex linked they are more likely to receive it from their mothers. This gene causes heightened levels of serotonin in the brain at birth, which ultimately causes your brain to become insensitive to serotonin. All these biological issues are common among serial killers and Fallon suggests that these defects are contributing factors for why killers feel the need to kill.

I thought it was interesting that being a killer is a genetic linked trait. Before watching this TED talk I never knew about the MAO-A gene, but now it makes sense that the gene could be sex-linked and only passed down from the mother. This also helps explain why killers tend to be mostly mail because they are more susceptible to getting the x-linked gene passed down to them.

Jim Fallon is a very trustworthy presenter. He has over 35 years of experience studying the brain and is currently a neuroscience professor at the University of California. Throughout his presentation he made convincing claims that were supported by facts and brain images. The evidence that was presented logically made sense. He talked about performing CAT scans on his own family members, which suggests that he knows how to read and interpret these scans. Therefore, Jim Fallon most likely provided credible claims and evidence.

Fallon suggests that males are more susceptible to becoming serial killers and he says that traumatic experience in childhood can also contribute killer qualities. For my research study, I would randomly select groups of male and female children from various socio-economic classes. Using a longitudinal study, I would carefully monitor their brain imaging as they mature into adulthood. This research study would allow me to see if a child experience trauma later developed brain abnormalities in adulthood.

--Original published at MelanieBlevins

For the third first impression post I chose to watch the TED talk by Jimmy Fallon. This was entitled “Exploring the Mind of a Killer.” Psychopathic killers and murder mysteries have always been an interesting topic to explore through television and news articles. This was particularly interesting because it put a new spin on crime by looking at it from a neurological level and showing the differing brain structures of psychopaths.

Jimmy Fallon has studied neuroscience and is now a professor at the University of California. By looking at the brain of a psychopath, Fallon hoped to find a reason for psychopathic tendencies.  Fallon discovered that multiple factors can result in a psychopath- events in the early childhood, genes, and brain damage. Usually, psychopaths have brain damage to their orbital cortex; the inside of the temporal lobes in ones brain. The particular aspects of each psychopathic killer depends on when the brain damage occurred. Additionally, Fallon discussed the MAOA gene which is the gene passed from mother to son. This can cause the brain to experience extremely high levels of serotonin during development. Also, this explains why most psychopaths are men because this gene comes from a mothers X chromosome. Exposure to this has been seen to cause frustration and violence later on in life.

What interested me the most about this talk was that most psychopaths are shown to have similar brain development issues resulting in their violent tendencies. This is interesting because usually when you hear about killers they are claimed to be crazy, where in fact they could each be mentally ill. Additionally, there are others in the world that may have overexposure to serotonin but are not serial killers. This raises questions about those individuals and if they have underlying thoughts or violence issues.

I believe that Jimmy Fallon’s presentation was correct and that he is a trustworthy candidate. He has studied behavior in the brain for thirty years and has a lot of background with neuroscience. He had research to back up his claims about the correlation between serial killers and brain issues. He showed the audience his findings by explaining brain scans and showing images of the scans to those watching. Overall, I think Fallon made a very strong conclusion from his experiment and presented it well.

Based on the video, I would test the effects of the MAOA on those who are not serial killers. A lot of people in the world have this gene defect but are not effected with as much extreme violence as others. This may have to do with past experiences during brain development that have caused extreme cases. I can test the correlation between the MAOA gene and past life experience to determine levels of violence and psychopathic tendencies.

--Original published at Pisacane Perspectives

I chose to watch Thomas Insel’s TED Talk “Towards A New Understanding of Mental Illness” because I’ve been learning about mental illness in my Music Therapy classes and I find the topic very interesting. In this talk , Insel illustrates the serious effects mental illnesses have on the brain, and how they compare to other physical illnesses. He presented a lot of data on the advancements made in lowering mortality rates when it comes to physical diseases such as AIDS, Leukemia, strokes, and heart attacks, and explained that the reason death rates were going down were because of early intervention. He then compared this data to suicide rates due to mental illness, and there has been almost no progress. This is because mental illness is seen now as behavioral illness, which is treated only after behavioral symptoms are shown. Mental illnesses like PTSD, depression, OCD, and anxiety disorders are caused by the way the brain is wired, and it’s behavioral effects only are shown after a large amount of brain tissue is affected. To only give treatment after that has happened is to deny early intervention. Insel utilized a lot or research and brain scans showing the deteriorating brain tissue, and for this reason I think his information is trustworthy. He also works for the federal government trying to make advances in combating mental illness so I think he was optimistically honest.

The thing I found most interesting about this talk was the way he kept explaining treatment for mental illness by comparing it to how it would be treated if it had been a physical illness. This seems to make people understand it better, and it reminded me of something we talked about in my Music Therapy class. My professor once said to us, “you’d never tell someone to just ‘get over’ a heart attack. You’d never tell someone ‘just smile and you’ll feel better.’’ Which is true, but yet it’s still said to people with mental illnesses. Society takes physical illnesses a lot more seriously than mental ones, despite mental illness being just as deadly.

I think a way to research the effect of early intervention would be to track the progression of a disease such as Schizophrenia in groups who begin treatment for the disease at different times. There would be a group who begin treatment at age five, then other groups who begin at age ten, fifteen, twenty (when behavioral symptoms are displayed), and twenty five. This would be a long term experiment which would end with seeing how advanced the sample’s Schizophrenia becomes at age forty by doing brain scans for affected brain tissue.

--Original published at KatiesPerspectives

The TED talk I chose to watch was ‘Jim Fallon: Exploring the Mind of a Killer.’ I chose to watch this TED talk because I have always been interested in exploring forensics and the workings of the minds of the world’s most well-known killers. Although this wasn’t a long speech, it was packed with information and I found it very easy to listen to. Besides it being interesting and engaging, Jim Fallon, the speaker, was really easy to listen to in the sense that he didn’t use huge words that were hard to understand. If there was ever a time that he said something that wasn’t obvious to the average person, he made sure to explain what he was talking about. In this speech, Fallon compared and contrasted the brain scans of the brains of the worlds most famous killers from John Wayne Gacy to David Berkowitz to Charles Manson. He was able to note a number of similarities but only a few obvious differences within the brain scans. This helps to support his point in that it’s possible that there are physical/genetic reasons why people turn out to be killers.

Something that I thought was very interesting was when Jim discussed the issue of the physical interworking of the mind that made men and woman different in the way that they think about such issues. Due to genetics and interactions with environments, it’s known that epigenetic effects of the brain and damage to the orbital cortex and the interior part of the temple could have some effect on whether or not they are a killer. Its also interesting that the gene (the MAO gene) which is inherited from your mother, it explains why men are sometimes more violent or likely to become killers. Parents can pass down 2 X chromosomes to their daughter (thus, this gene is properly “diluted”) while the son can only get 1 X chromosome from their mother (thus, they have a greater chance of having this sort of MAO gene.)

James (“Jim”) Fallon spoke a lot about how he got his start and developed his interest in studying the minds of killers. He said how he was relatives with one of the murderers from the very first solved and documented murders in history. He then went on to talk about how he was asked to review brain scans and give his scholarly input on what he thought about them (without knowing that they were brain scans from the brains of killers.) Having this background knowledge is not necessarily important to the purpose of the study, but it is definitely very interesting.

Although this was a short video, I felt like I learned a lot and what was said was well spoken. This was a generally laid back lecture and it was very easy to listen to and packed with information. I would be interested in learning more about how much the interworking of the minds of killers has to do with genetics and the relationship between the two.

--Original published at Sarah's Blog

For this week’s first impression post, I chose to watch Thomas Insel’s TEDTalk titled “Toward a New Understanding of Mental Illness”. I am very interested in learning about mental illnesses and how they have an effect on people differently. In this video Insel talked about how the rates of mortality in physical diseases have lowered drastically within a span of about 30 years, but suicide is still a major leading cause of death. He labels suicide as a condition or situation that leads to mortality, but most people do not realize how common it is. Some statistics that Insel talked about was how “there are 38,000 suicides a year in the United States”, which equates to about one every 15 minutes. That fact alone stunned me, as I never realized how big of a number it was. He also stated that “90% of suicides are related to a mental illness”, which was also an interesting fact to hear. Thomas Insel talks about how mental disorders are being considered “behavior” disorders, but he believes that we should rethink them as brain disorders. He is working towards making progress on scanning the brain to be able to detect brain disorders early on. Insel explains how patterns in our brain can be a factor in mental illnesses.

Insel explained this topic in a simple sense, which helped greatly to understand the topic. He has put in a lot of work into this study and seems to be very trustworthy in his information. I favor that he is working on this and I believe that this will be helpful in the future to try and see where mental illnesses begin. I would like to continue to follow this research and see how it progresses as time goes on.

--Original published at Jessie's PSY105 Blog

The TED talk that I chose to watch was give by Jim Fallon, called “Exploring the mind of a killer”. The reason I chose this talk is because I have always wondered if chemical imbalances in the brain or differences in brain structure are what cause a person to turn into a psychopathic killer, or if its simply just an outcome of the environment they grew up in and the personality they developed (basically the standard nature vs. nurture conflict).

The talk started out with Fallon telling about some experimentation that he conducted with the brains of psychopathic killers. He pointed out that there was distinct brain damage in the brains of murders. Specifically, he pointed out damage to the orbital cortex and the anterior temporal cortex that was a commonality among the brains. He then talked about a gene for violence that is passed down hereditarily, which led him to speak about his own family history. He mentioned how earlier generations of his family were murderers (at one point he said seven men in a row on his father’s side). He chose to talk about this to emphasize that while the ‘violent’ gene can be passed on, it isn’t always.

Something that I found most interesting about the talk was how he explained why most psychopathic killers are typically male. He said that the gene that allowed for more violence/violent tendencies is located on the X chromosome, meaning that you receive it prominently from your mother. This is why males prominently end up with gene because the y chromosome that they receive from their father does not have the gene.

I found the presenter himself to be a reliable source. He led off the presentation by providing the audience with his credentials. He mentioned having a degree in neuroscience and being a professor on the subject as well. He then described the personal research that he did on the brains and how he even went as far as beginning to put his own family through CAT scans to try to trace where the ‘trouble’ would be in his family. To me, it seems that his credentials are good enough for him to be a reliable source on neuroscience.

A potential research idea for this subject would be to conduct a cross-sectional study on how different ages affect the potency of this gene. By dissecting and analyzing brains, in much the same fashion as Fallon did, of psychopaths of different ages, it could show whether there is a time when the brain is more apt to cause violence. This could be done by measuring the amount of damage to the orbital cortex and anterior temporal cortex. If a trend was found, then there would be more information on when someone was more at risk of doing something violent. Pairing this information with knowing whether or not someone has the ‘violent’ gene, would help us to understand why these psychopathic crimes are committed.

--Original published at Nadia's Blog

I chose the TED talk on how the brain may fix itself with help. I decided to chose this topic because I immediately was drawn to the scientific aspect of how the brain is able to work. Jocelyne Bloch began to explain how when there is damage to the human brain it most likely leads to an individual being handicap. Her as well as other doctors, have been trying to find evidence to repair the brain in a successful way. During a head trauma the brain begins to swell with pressure. The only way to decrease it is by removing a section of the brain tissue. When it was removed, they decided to study the tissue and attempt to grow new cells from that tissue, which they realized would be very difficult. Many attempts later they were able to grow new cells and soon realized they had created a new cell population that would divide slower and were able to die quicker. They created an experiment to discover if they could use these cells to help with brain repair. They first did a biopsy of the brain, then looked at the cell culture, labeled the cells they injected with colors in order to track them, and then re-implanted them in the same individual. They began testing this on monkeys, their control group was a normal monkey and they came to find that when injecting the cells into a normal monkey the cells were not needed and disappeared. They then injected the cells in the monkeys who had a lesion, and found that these cells remained, and began to mature into new neurons. Their experiment resulted in success and are now in the process of meeting the regulations for them to apply this concept on humans.

I found it interesting that they were able to track the exact cells that they had implanted into the brain by coloring them. To me this was surprising, since they are able to differentiate between millions and millions of cells. I felt that the presenter was very reliable because not only is this research in her field, but she is a very well educated neurosurgeon. I also felt that Bloch was reliable because along with her efforts in her study, they were also able to make progress and get logical and accurate results from their experiments.

Another research idea could be studying other types of brain tissues and applying the same process of studying the culture, labeling the cells and re-implanting them into the same individual, to see the affects of different cell tissues in the brain.