Low Down

    Damage to the brain also shapes psychopathology in different ways depending on when it occurs. If at the age of two a child suffers damage to the orbital cortex, which is involved in ethics and morality, he may never develop a sense of right and wrong and may become profoundly psychopathic. If the damage occurs at the age of eight, the person’s orbital cortex may have helped other parts of the brain understand right and wrong, but he won’t be able to stop himself from committing wrong, as the orbital cortex is also involved in inhibition. If the damage occurs as a teenager or adult, the person will know right from wrong, and other areas of the brain involved in inhibition will be mature enough to help control impulsivity when the orbital cortex fails, but stressful conditions could easily push him over the edge.   Even without specific brain damage, several psychiatric diseases can rear their heads later in life. The brain’s cortices develop in an orderly fas...

There were cases where the murderer denied early abuse, but many people will deny such abuse, only for it to be discovered later that either they were too embarrassed to admit it, or they were protecting  the abusing adult, typically a family member. It was also becoming known from many studies that there was a high incidence of early childhood physical, emotional, or sexual abuse in the prison population of psychopaths. A small survey of thirty-five psychopathic offenders in youth detention facilities found that 70 percent reported serious mistreatment throughout childhood. Given that the onset of reliable memory for childhood events in adults may reach back to three to four years of age, this implied that a higher percentage of adult criminal psychopaths actually experienced significant abuse earlier than that. As such, it was possible that more than 90 percent of them were abused at some point in their early life. Add to this those psychopaths who protect their abusers, and the ...