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we will know about the the Psychopaths
enhance killer instinct there
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they're finely tuned vulnerability and
any but it may surprise you to know that
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there are some situations in which
psychopaths are actually more adept at
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saving lives
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then they are taking them so let me give
you an example of what I mean by that ok
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imagine you've got a train and it's
hurtling down a track in its path
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five people are trapped on the line and
cannot escape
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fortunately you can flick a switch which
diverts the train down a fork in that
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track away from those five people but at
a price
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there is another person trapped down
that fork and the train will kill them
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instead question should you flick the
switch now most people have little
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trouble deciding what to do under those
circumstances though the the thought of
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flicking the switch isn't exactly a nice
one
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the utilitarian Joyce as it were killing
just the one person instead of the 5
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represents the least worst option
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ok but now let me give you a variation
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you've got a train speeding out of
control down a track and it's going to
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plow into five people on the line but
this time you are standing behind a very
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large stranger on a foot bridge above
that track the only way to save the
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people is to heat the stranger over he
will fall to a certain death but his
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considerable bulk will block the train
saving five lives
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now we've got what we might call a real
dilemma on our hands okay
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while the scoring lives is precisely the
same as in the first scenario 5211
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choice of action appears far trickier
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now why should that be all the reason it
turns out all boils down to temperature
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ok case 1 represents what we might call
an impersonal dilemma
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it involves those areas of the brain the
prefrontal cortex the posterior parietal
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cortex in particular the anterior para
cingulate cortex a temporal pole and the
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superior temporal sulcus bit of
neuroanatomy for their primarily
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responsible for what we call cold
empathy for reasoning and rational
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thought
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k stew on the other and represent what
we might call a personal dilemma
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it involves the emotion center of the
brain known as the amygdala the
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circuitry of hot empathy
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what we might call the feeling of
feeling one another person is feeling
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now
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psychopaths just like most normal
members of the population have no
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trouble at all with case one they flick
the switch in the train diverse
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accordingly killing just the one person
instead of the five but this is where
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the plot thickens
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quite unlike normal limits of the
population
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psychopaths also experienced little
difficulty with case two Psychopaths
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without a moment's hesitation are
perfectly willing to chat a fat guy over
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the rails
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if that's what the doctor orders now
moreover this difference in behavior has
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a distinct neural signature the pattern
of brain activation in both normal
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people and Psychopaths is identical on
the presentation of the impersonal moral
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dilemma but radically different when
things start to get a bit more personal
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imagine that I were to hook you up to a
brain scanner a functional magnetic
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resonance imaging machine and were to
present you with those two dilemmas
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okay what would I observe as you went
about trying to solve them
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well at the precise moment that the
nature of the dynamics which is from
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impersonal too personal
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I would see the emotion center of your
brain your amygdala and related brain
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circuits the the media although frontal
cortex for example light up like a
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pinball machine
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I would witness the the moment in other
words when emotion put some money in the
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slot but in Psychopaths I would see
precisely nothing and the passage from
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impersonal to personal would slip by
unnoticed because that a motion
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neighborhood of their brains that
emotional zip code has a neural curfew
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and that's why they're perfectly happy
to check that fat guy over the side
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without even batting an eye
