The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain

The last scan in the pile was strikingly odd. In fact it looked exactly like the most abnormal of the scans I had just been writing about suggesting that the poor individual it belonged to was a psychopathor at least shared an uncomfortable amount of traits with one....When I found out who the scan belonged to I had to believe there was a mistake....But there had been no mistake. The scan was mine. For the first fifty-eight years of his life James Fallon was by all appearances a normal guy. A successful neuroscientist and medical school professor hed been raised in a loving supportive family married his high school sweetheart and had three kids and lots of friends. Then he learned a shocking truth that would not only disrupt his personal and professional life but would lead him to question the very nature of his own identity. The Psychopath Inside tells the fascinating story of Fallons reaction to the discovery that he has the brain of a psychopath. While researching serial murderers he uncovered a distinct neurological pattern in their brain scans that helped explain their cold and violent behavior. A few months later he learned that he was descended from a family with a long line of murderers which confirmed that Fallons own brain pattern wasnt a fluke. As a scientist convinced that humans are shaped by their genetics Fallon set out to reconcile the truth about his brain with everything he knew about the mind behavior and the influence of nature vs. nurture on our personalities. How could he a successful scientist and a happy family man with no history of violence be a psychopath? How much did his biology influence his behavior? Was he capable of some of the gruesome atrocities perpetrated by the serial killers he had studied? Combining his personal experience with scientific analysis Fallon shares his journey and the discoveries that ultimately led him to understand that despite everything science can teach us humans are even more complex than we can imagine.