Psychopaths Have Brain Structure Abnormality

mmmscience writes "A group of scientists has identified a structure in the brain of psychopaths that is abnormal when compared with controls. The change is found in the uncinate fasciculus, a bridge of white matter that connects the amygdala (emotion/aggression brain region) and the orbitofrontal cortex (decision making region). Interestingly, the greater the abnormality in the region, the more severe the levels of sociopathy in a subject. The results were published as 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy' in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial." The study's results have not yet been replicated by other researchers.

Comments

Re:Test Bank CEOs

[Bob9113]

1) It shouldn't matter if anyone is a sociopath as long as they do not break any laws.

That is an interesting hypothesis, but I do not concur. Our economic system, the free market, relies on good faith intent to operate efficiently. Not an intent to be good, mind you, but an intent to faithfully fulfill the agreements into which one enters. If one enters into such agreements in bad faith, it results in either distorted transactions, the inefficiency of court proceedings, or both. The law is neither a cost efficient tool for guiding the free market nor a precisely targeted one.

The goal of the free market, and its free hand, is to minimize the need for government interference by leveraging one inherent aspect of humanity; greed. That is a worthy objective because the law is known to be a blunt weapon, guided as it is by masses, influence peddlers, and politicians. Actors in bad faith can distort the legal system, and its use is costly even when it reaches the correct conclusion.

The solution to the dilemma between bad faith actors and inefficient laws in the free market is to allow corporations which are directed by actors in bad faith to fail. Perfect information, losses incurred from treating with a company that fails, and the stigma of failing the stockholders takes care of the rest. It might be considered a brutal system in some regards, but it is widely held as being relatively efficient -- when it is allowed to correct itself.

Enter the practice of not allowing banks to fail. When we engage in such inhibition of the free market, it loses its ability to correct actors in bad faith. Then we have a problem.

So, there are at least two options; find a way to make it tolerable to let banks fail so the free market can correct bad faith actors, or find a way to prevent actors in bad faith from running banks. A third path is to allow actors in bad faith to take advantage of such a system, and suffer the consequences as we did last Fall. Yet another is to establish that there are no actors in bad faith running banks.

I'm not suggesting which of those solutions is the right answer, nor that those are the only possible answers. All I'm trying to do is to establish a serious and complicated problem one must solve in developing and maintaining a healthy free market economy.