“There are a lot of friends and acquaintances, people who like to be around me. But there are people who had been close to me, yet once I told them I had the brain of a psychopath some of them wouldn’t be with me anymore.” James Fallon neuroscientist

Neuroscientist James Fallon discovered something startling during his research into the brains of serial murders. Scans of their criminal brains matched the pattern he found in his own brain. Did the similarity with the brains of murderers mean he was a psychopath, that his Jack the Ripper bent had not yet emerged?

After reading his book, The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain (Current) and interviewing Fallon on the phone, it’s obvious he’s a quirky guy. He talks at sonic speed and he’s been diagnosed with so many other psychiatric ailments — obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar, panic attacks — it’s hard to fathom how he functions. But he does, impressively: He’s a medical professor at the University of California, Irvine, and has been married to the same woman for more than 40 years.

Yet, after we talked about his hypomania and his wife’s patience, he asked: “Can you imagine living with someone like me?”

(Our conversation has been shortened for length.)

How did you learn your brain pattern matched those of serial murderers?

Completely by chance.

I’ve been studying brain scans of murderers since the early 1990s. It was a sidelight of my other research on schizophrenia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Around 2004, I got a whole bunch of these murderers’ brains to look at. To my surprise, I found a pattern in their brain scans.

In these people, parts of the brain that regulate emotion, ethics, morality and empathy were turned off. These areas form a circuit, a network in the brain and connect to the amygdala, which controls your animal emotions, your aggression.

I started to give talks on the pattern I discovered in these psychopaths’ brains.

A year or so later, my family became part of a study we were doing on Alzheimer’s. The PET scans came back and I was relieved they all looked normal, except one scan, which looked very abnormal.

I asked the technician to look at the scans of my family to make sure they weren’t mixed up with those of the psychopaths. The technician said no, the abnormal scan is somebody in your family. I looked again and saw it had my name on it. It was like a joke was being played on me by myself. Here is a scientist who is studying murderers’ brains, and bang — he discovers he has the same brain pattern.

Weren’t you scared?

No. I thought to myself, I haven’t killed anybody, I haven’t done anything bad. I knew that just because you had a brain pattern that way, it didn’t mean you were a criminal.

But there are odd things about your family.

My father is descended from the Cornells and the first case of matricide in the colonies was by Thomas Cornell, who killed his mother. One of my distant cousins was Ezra Cornell, who founded Cornell University, but another cousin was Lizzy Borden.

My mother loved these stories about my father’s family because my father always teased her about being Sicilian.

I’ve always believed genes form the basis of who we are. I’m nothing like my sister but we have the same parents and grew up in the same home. My children were born with distinctive personalities. But you don’t buy into the nature versus nurture theory.

From early on, I discounted the affects of environment, believing in nature versus nurture. After looking at my genetic tests, I had to change my tune. It’s not that I don’t believe in biological impact but the more I studied it I began to realize how important early environment was, early nurturing and having an intact home.

We know more today about how nature and nurture work. We know how genes can get turned on and off by environment. Your biology determines a lot but the early affects of environment can manipulate the genes you have.

You had great parents.

My mother and I have a great connection, even though I am a difficult son.

I was in the middle of writing my book and my mother said: ‘I’ve got to tell you something. As a young teenager you were really going downhill.’ She told me I went from being a social, happy kid to being dark. I probably had a major depressive episode.

Isn’t that classic adolescence? The tortured teen. Your hormones are going crazy, you’re making the transition from childhood to adulthood.

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Yes, but every kid has normative behaviour. Mine became quite unlike what I had been. I had full obsessive compulsive disorder that started at that time and changed to panic attacks.

I was later diagnosed as mild bi-polar. I love the hypomania I have, I really like it. It is something I wouldn’t give up. But the darkness, the dread that accompanied the panic attacks, was extremely unpleasant.

You say you have no empathy, the classic trait of a psychopath.

I don’t have emotional empathy but I have cognitive empathy. I try to read what people are feeling. My wife said she is married to two people, this loving sweet fun guy and this other dark character. What I don’t have is anti-social disorder, the criminal instinct.

After you learned you had a psychopathic brain, you asked friends and family about whether you demonstrated deviant traits as you were growing up: narcissism, egocentricity, thrill-seeking.

Some people told me, ‘It it wasn’t for your wife, you would have been the head of a crime organization.’ When you have it in front of you, the whole banquet of stuff you’ve done and friends give you the same picture, it becomes a challenge. What do I do about this?

There is a wonderful part of me but then there is this other character you don’t see all the time. It’s not pleasant to admit these things.

When I was about 14, a father of a really close friend said he didn’t want my friend to play with me anymore. My friend said ‘My father doesn’t like you. He doesn’t trust you.’

There are a lot of friends and acquaintances, people who like to be around me. But there are people who had been close to me, yet once I told them I had the brain of a psychopath some of them wouldn’t be with me anymore. One colleague said, ‘I like to be around you but I don’t want to be alone with you.’

Are you on medication? Anti-depressants?

No. I want to be in control.

Maybe I should have. Really, I am narcissistic enough to believe I can beat anything. The depressions I went into, the panic attacks and the dark thoughts, I have those under control. But the hypomania had stayed with me and I love it.

In your book you conclude you’re not really a psychopath. You have some of the characteristics: superficiality, grandiosity, deceitfulness, but you can control them. Are you just lucky?

I am short of being a real psychopath but I am so close. I have the traits of being a pro-social psychopath. I was born into a wonderful family surrounded by nurturing people. I guess I am a lucky near psychopath.

Categorical psychopaths are really dangerous people. It’s not that I don’t do dangerous or irresponsible things. It’s just that for or me being good is a challenge.