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significance of these findings cannot be underestimated

the biological basis of psychopathy remains poorly understood

To date, nobody has investigated the 'connectivity' between the specific brain regions implicated in psychopathy.

Earlier studies had suggested that dysfunction of specific brain regions might underpin psychopathy

amygdale

the degree of abnormality was significantly related to the degree of psychopathy. These results suggest that psychopaths have biological differences in the brain which may help to explain their offending behaviours.

For over 27,000 years

stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods.

Our brain on stories: How our brains become more active when we tell stories

We all enjoy a good story,

why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events?

we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part in the brain gets activated.

It's in fact quite simple. I

Broca's area and Wernicke's area

language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning.

things change dramatically.

how delicious certain foods were, our sensory cortex lights up. If it's about motion, our motor cortex gets active:

but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.

A story can put your whole brain to work.

can have the same effect on them too.

The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it can synchronize, says Uri Hasson from Princeton:

By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains."

Evolution has wired our brains for storytelling—how to make use of it

hy does the format of a story, where events unfold one after the other, have such a profound impact on our learning?

We are wired that way.

While we are busy searching for a similar experience in our brains, we activate a part called insula, which helps us relate to that same experience of pain, joy, or disgust.

We think in narratives all day long,

We make up (short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation.

In fact, Jeremy Hsu found [that] "personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations."

henever we hear a story, we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences.

metaphors work so well with us.

story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect.

John Bargh

We link up metaphors and literal happenings automatically. Everything in our brain is looking for the cause and effect relationship of something we've previously experienced.

ou mention the same story to him, as if it was your idea?

According to Uri Hasson from Princeton, a story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience.

tell them a story,

According to Princeton researcher Hasson, storytelling is the only way to plant ideas into other people's minds.

Write more persuasively—bring in stories from yourself or an expert

multitasking is so hard for us.

ask for quotes from the top folks in the industry or simply find great passages they had written online.

The simple story is more successful than the complicated one

easy to convince ourselves that they have to be complex and detailed to be interesting.

the simpler a story, the more likely it will stick.

Using simple language as well as low complexity is the best way to activate the brain regions that make us truly relate to the happenings of a story.

xchanging stories with those of experts.

educe the number of adjectives or complicated nouns in a presentation or article

Our brain learns to ignore certain overused words and phrases that used to make stories awesome.

y rare, a 2009 study by Belgian researchers found that 41 percent of hospital and rehab patients with a vegetative state diagnosis were actually minimally conscious

n a few cases, this technology has enabled rudimentary communication with patients trapped inside an unresponsive body. In the future, some scientists believe, it may be possible to directly decode these patients’ thoughts.

technology that created these disorders in the first place.

ut a badly damaged brain is not necessarily unconscious. The recent research tells us quite clearly that human consciousness is not binary. It can exist in degrees, fade in and out, even when the body is unresponsive.

wen also described a new way to assess mental function in unresponsive patients. It involves scanning someone’s brain as they watch an 8 minute clip of an Alfred Hitchcock film. When healthy people do this, various parts of the brain synchronize their activity at certain times in the clip. Owen argues that if brain injury patients exhibit similar patterns, it could be a telltale sign of residual cognitive function.

imple yes-no communication probably isn’t enough to allow patients to participate in decisions about their care.

Gallant’s lab has shown that it’s possible to reconstruct still images and video clips from the patterns of activity elicited in the brain of the person viewing them. If Gallant can see what your visual cortex is doing, he can tell you, more or less, what you’re looking at.

He seems calm, even normal

his IQ is over 140

The subjects rate whether the picture is a moral violation on a scale of 1 to 5. Kiehl says most psychopaths do not differ from normal subjects in the way they rate the photos: Both psychopaths and the average person rank the KKK with a burning cross as a moral violation. But there's a key difference: Psychopaths' brains behave differently from that of a nonpsychopathic person. When a normal person sees a morally objectionable photo, his limbic system lights up. This is what Kiehl calls the "emotional circuit," involving the orbital cortex above the eyes and the amygdala deep in the brain. But Kiehl says when psychopaths like Dugan see the KKK picture, their emotional circuit does not engage in the same way.

He notes that alcoholics have brain abnormalities. Do we give them a pass if they kill someone while driving drunk?

Neuroscience and neuroimaging is going to change the whole philosophy about how we punish and how we decide who to incapacitate and how we decide how to deal with people

Just like DNA, he believes brain scans will eventually be standard fare. And that, he and others say, could upend our notions of culpability, crime and punishment.

The challenge for parents, educators, clinicians and others who deal with teenagers is to determine whether their exasperating behavior is just the stuff of growing up or whether their moodiness and lack of judgment are indicative of a larger, perhaps pathological, problem. Many mental disorders begin to manifest during adolescence, including schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol abuse. “The key,” says Jensen, “is to be aware of what’s going on with your kids. Teens today are exposed to more stress than ever before, including drugs, alcohol, and violence. We all have to be mindful.”