by Robert Wilkinson
A British study indicates they’re studying children’s brains for possible signs of future psychopathy. That may or may not be a good thing, but at least they could figure out potential banksters and steer them into more productive professions.
From the NBC News story by Brian Alexander, “Budding psychopaths? Study hints traits may be seen in kids' brains” we read that Brit research suggests that since we know traits that indicate psychopathic behavior, we could find out if children are predisposed to those traits. This is definitely “Brain police” thinking! While we know that psychopaths have little to no empathy for those they hurt, and they don’t care about the pain their victims feel, as it was put by one researcher, “there is a lot of variability among children with conduct problems.”
From the article:
The study, published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, gathered a sample of 37 boys verified by surveys completed by teachers and parents to have serious conduct problems such as causing harm to others and uncaring attitudes toward others, and a control group of 18 boys who did not. The boys were aged 10 to 16.The boys were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine that depicts which areas of the brain are active in response to a stimulus. The boys were shown a series of 192 photos of hands and feet in pain, or no pain, situations. For example, an image might show a hand resting on a table top with a knife laying beside it, or the same hand on the table with the point of the knife blade about to pierce it.
As a group, the boys with serious conduct problems tended to show decreased activation in areas of the brain -- especially the anterior cingulate cortex, and the insula -- that are critical for empathy for pain, in comparison to the control group of boys.
With lower empathy, they were less reactive to others’ pain. This could be the root of what the researchers call “callous traits.”
Reduced response to pain of other people, the researchers wrote, “could reflect an early neurobiological marker indexing risk for empathic deficits seen in adult psychopathy.”
If that sounds a little scary, like the Philip K. Dick novel “Minority Report” (made into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 2002), in which crime is predicted and future wrongdoers labeled and arrested before they offend, Viding and others in the field stress two points: any such future is a long way off, and that’s not the goal of the research.
Of course, we are also told of conflicting studies that found opposite results. I suppose that’s the problem with random studies of only a few dozen children. And of course, if consciousness is everything, then I’m sure we could see changes in the region where empathy is registered by focusing on learning empathic response to pain in others. In other words, in this study is the tail wagging the dog? Are they finding an effect and labeling it a cause?
A point is made that “the brains of psychopaths work differently than those of non-psychopaths. Psychopaths, for example, often show dysfunction in the amygdala, where fear is processed. As a result, psychopaths are bad at recognizing fear in others.”
While stressing “no child should ever be labeled a psychopath… because their brains and life experiences are still developing” they then jump to “the real goal is treatment” so they can “develop earlier identifiers that will allow us to begin treatment when children are young.” The virtues of “behavioral therapy” are offered as solutions, which of course is only saying that if parents knew how to reward empathic behavior, and parents were better parents, it could work, though the researcher hedges with “it may always be difficult to parent such children.”
It seems obvious that if certain children are predisposed to cruel and hurtful behaviors and don’t seem to care about others it could be a problem. Welcome to the human race. We’ve been dealing with degenerate violent people since the beginning of time. That would imply there are those who really don’t care and really can hurt us.
Of course it’s good for parents to model compassionate behavior. Unfortunately, most people on Earth were not raised by saints or sages and therefore learned what they learned “through main strength and ignorance,” as a Great One once put it. We also read that “callous” behavior is an indicator of a psychopath. I also believe that’s in the eye of the beholder.
Still, psychopaths are out there. A lot of them. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are all abusive, regardless of what they say. And yes, many psychopathic behaviors are evident at a young age. They were called “juvenile delinquents” back when I was young.
I agree that more parents should teach their children well. That also is in the eye of the beholder, and if a parent doesn’t demonstrate compassion, then all the lectures will go for naught. You cannot teach empathy while simultaneously being racist, sexist, or encouraging a child to shoot birds.
It also seems obvious that a Being must want to become more empathic or it’ll be a show, which is also a trait of psychopaths. Children learn at a young age to be performers so they will get praise and avoid scolding. Psychopaths are often very charming and persuasive. And society often rewards psychopaths with money and power, since so many of them run the banking industry and other large corporations.
Anyway, some news and a few insights for your consideration from deep inside the rabbit hole. The Brain is a miraculous thing…..
“We don’t need no thought control…..”
© Copyright 2013 Robert Wilkinson
I saw a documentary about a scientist that was doing research on "psychopath brains" - and then suddenly he discovered that he was one of them! He had a psychopath brain. And now he understood why he had this agressive outbursts..And his family said that they had been afraid sometimnes..But he had a stable and loving family when he was a child..
Posted by: ulrika | May 09, 2013 at 12:47 AM