When faced with news articles and social media posts of a new serial killer or murderer on the loose, many might wonder what’s wrong with them? The brain of a psychopath is much different than a normal, healthy brain. Although people can be influenced by parents and childhood experiences, it has been proven that psychopaths are neurologically distinct. Gaining more information and knowledge about how the brain works and affects our behavior can help us fight against crime and mental illness, ultimately creating a safer and healthier society.
Brain disorders specialist and psychiatrist Daniel Amen has looked at hundreds of brain scans and has noticed numerous distinctions in brains of psychopaths and criminals, including observed lowered blood flow in the brain. (PET) brain scan studies, which compared forensic psychiatric patients with normal brains, saw decreased frontal blood flow or metabolism associated with “repetitive” and “purposeless” violent behavior.
It was also found by Daniel Aman that people with antisocial disorder have low frontal lobe function, lower heart rates, and lower sweat gland activity. This is why lie detector tests are not admitted into court, since they don’t get the same results when testing a psychopath versus a normal person because of the irregularities in the nervous system. Along with the prefrontal cortex, psychopaths’ limbic system of the brain is also seen to be extremely inactive and unresponsive. The limbic system is the part of the brain that is responsible for processing and regulating emotion and memory, while also dealing with sexual stimulation and learning. This is why psychopaths’ are much more likely to be criminals, murderers, and serial killers. Amen has found that psychopathic individuals can feel fear, but have trouble in the automatic detection and responsivity to threat.
By learning more about the brain and its functions and irregularities we are able to better understand crime, how it’s caused and how we can fix the problem. Along with learning about crime, we can also learn more about brain health and how we can improve treatment and diagnosis therefore creating a tight knit society that is able to treat and deal with these issues in society.

.