Discussion»Questions»Outside the Mug» Do you think could be a 'gram of compassion/empathy' within a psychopath's brain but blocked from connecting to their conscious mind?
Do you think could be a 'gram of compassion/empathy' within a psychopath's brain but blocked from connecting to their conscious mind?
If that were a possibility then how to remove the blockage.. like some people have talent for creating artwork but not me because that gram of artistic talent that may be in my brain is blocked away from my conscious access to it.
Im not a professional, so i cant answer this with any certainty. But I do know that with psychopaths, empathy isnt something they are born with, so they cannot grow one. Its a mental condition. Lacking creative talent isnt a mental condition and can be nurtured and developed into an ability be artistic. just my opinion though.
I am just saying there may be some things dormant in the brain -good or bad- that are blocked from the conscious mind. Was a recent story of a person suffered a serious head injury but something came of it that developed a newly found talent for them doing artwork the person never had before. The injury apparently 'unblocked' that dormant area of their brain.
This post was edited by Kittigate at September 16, 2017 12:49 AM MDT
Yeah. Gotta be careful to avoid head injuries though because could block my gram of compassion/empathy and turn me into a psychopath. Anything could happen.
From what we know now, there are not only chemical differences in their brains, but some parts of their brains are underdeveloped and others don't show as much activity. And, these are the areas that impact how emotions are formed, how we handle social information, and so on. So, there's no switch or blockage- they're genuinely missing the part of their brain that makes them normal. While there are some things that have been shown to increase gray matter, they tend to be very targeted. Like, people into yoga can actually develop more gray matter in the parts of your brain that handle pain. From what I can tell, we haven't figured out how to target the areas affected in psychopaths.
Hypothetically speaking, I would assume that one day scientists will figure out how to build gray matter and rebalance the chemicals of a psychopath's brain, and maybe they'd even be able to find ways to get those parts of the brain to be more active as well. But, then we get into what you kind of mentioned- the brain is plastic. It forms new connections all the time. If one part of the brain is weak, it could branch a new connection and another part of the brain may take over. So, let's say we somehow managed to "fix" the psychopath's brain... I'm pretty sure we have no guarantee those parts of the brain are going to do what we want them to. Even if we play Dr. Frankenstein and try to mold someone's brain to the point where it appears normal, it may well do whatever it wants to do. Plus, science is really just digging into this. I'm not sure we've even uncovered all the things that cause these changes. Science at this point is just meddling. The prospect of testing treatments to correct it on real humans is kind of petrifying.
I suppose one must be very cautious when messing with nature. I talked to a scentist guy (i'm Alex from answerbag) kind of just joking that I should try implanting a cat gene in my body so whenever I got a craving for booze I might get my fix from harmless catnip instead. Anyway he explained how doing something like that could mess up my whole body system somehow.
You might be interested in watching In Cold Blood and A Clockwork Orange. Truman Capote could not find any evidence of compassion in the psychopath he studied for the book. A Clockwork Orange shows one treatment for psychopathy gone wrong. Both are good movies, I think.
This post was edited by CallMeIshmael at September 16, 2017 4:10 PM MDT
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