About the speaker:
Jim Fallon has taught neuroscience and psychiatry grand rounds at the University of California Irvine for thirty-five years. Jim studies how an individual's experience further shapes his or her development. He has made key contributions to understanding of adult stems and stroke, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Connection:
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Truman writes about a murder that took place in Holcomb, Kansas. The Clutter family were brutally murdered by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. In To Pity the Killer the author talks about how Perry came from a very abusive family, a family that didn't really care about him, and how this caused him to became a killer. His father beat his mother and his mother was an alcoholic. Perry had to go though all this hardship while he was still a kid. Fallon would have agreed that where Perry came from had a big impact on why he became a killer. |
Fallon's Argument:
Jim Fallon has started studying psychopaths and how they come to be who they are. With PET scans and EEG's Fallon has uncovering the traits that make people violent and murderous. |