The scientist who scanned his brain - and saw the 'mark' of a psychopath

Professor James Fallon is a neuroscientist who studied dozens of brain scans of psychopathic killers - looking for distinctive ‘flaws’ that might mean such people were born to kill.

A pattern of damage to certain parts of the brain emerged, as Fallon leafed through 70 EEG scans of convicted criminals. A particular gene also seemed to be closely associated with violent, psychopathic behaviour

Then one brain scan stopped Fallon in his tracks. The scan showed all the ‘markers’ of a classic psychopath. But it was Fallon’s own brain - included in the study as a comparison.

Speaking to Yahoo! News today, Fallon says, “I had been studying psychopaths and murderers - then I happened to discover that my own brain pattern and genetics were completely consistent with the people under study. I had to believe there was a mistake....But there had been no mistake. The scan was mine.”

Fallon is not a psychopath - or at least, not in the way the general public imagines psychopaths. The discovery shook up his ideas about behaviour profoundly, he says.

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“I am a successful happily married man who married my childhood sweetheart and have a fully functioning family of three kids and five grandchildren,” Fallon says.

In the months after the scan, though, members of Fallon’s family revealed a secret history to him - a dark side of his own family. His mother said,  "I hear you've been going around talking about psychopathic killers. And you're talking as if you come from a normal family."

She revealed that there were no fewer than seven murderers in his family, including the notorious axe murderess Lizzie Borden. Other members of the family, though, had been conscientious objectors and pacifists.

“I had always supported a fully genetic theory for the basis of behaviour - and faced with the new data in front of me, I had to eat crow in front of my colleagues,” he admits. “Ouch.”

Fallon says that the ‘danger’ gene is passed on from mother to son - but now doubts whether psychopaths are simply born.

“It completely blindsided me,” he says. “When I asked people the question, ‘What do you really think of me?’, all hell broke loose.”

Fallon has has tested his own family for signs. In his book, The Psychopath Inside, he talks about episodes in his own life where his behaviour might tally with that of psychopaths - including cheating at Scrabble with his children.

Fallon continues to work with psychopaths - both “in society” and in maximum security prisons. He refuses to be drawn on whether he ever feels “fellowship” with them.

Books such as Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work by Robert Hare have claimed that among business leaders, rates of psychopathy are triple those in society at large.

In society, around one per cent of people are psychopaths - in prison, that figure is 15%, according to Hare’s book.

“I have met full-blown psychopaths who are out in society,” Fallon says. “I have met some truly dangerous ones - the top being a paedophile rapist in solitary, doing 1,700 years in the joint. I have spent lots of time with him, his brother, his sweethearts. Perhaps too much time.

Fallon recommends that tests such as Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist, “Can give a good ballpark sense for those curious if they may have such traits - if done by yourself, or someone close and honest. Also, try out an online Psychopathic Personality Inventory test.”