ASPD: A Case Study

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Another area of the brain affected by ASPD is the amygdala (Hancock, 2014, p. 149). The amygdala is located just between the ear and the eye on both sides of the head. This is the part of the brain that processes fear, as well as what causes a person to decide their aggression level. All senses that a person has communicate with the amygdala, so a lot of emotional processes interact with it, and it also decides what motivates a person to act in certain ways. The amygdala in someone who has been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, the amygdala has been found to be smaller and much less active. This also indicates that someone with ASPD may not even be able to recognize fear or pain in other people. This suggests that people with …show more content…
This even includes their outside environment. When a child witnesses a tragic or traumatic event, it affects their lives, even if they do not remember it happened. Repressed memories can still control the way a person acts. Children who grew up in a war zone or watched their parents being abused were also found to be more likely to display symptoms of ASPD (Hancock, 2014, p. 100). A prime example of this situation exists in a man named James Fallon (Lewis, 2015). Fallon is a neuroscientist who studies the brains of criminals; specifically, he studied the brains of murderers and rapists. This means he worked closely with the brains of people who are considered sociopaths or psychopaths. Fallon stumbled upon an interesting discovery when studying brain scans when he looked at a picture of his own brain. He discovered that his brain looked exactly like the brains of the criminals he had been studying (Lewis, 2015). This discovery was important because it showed that not all people with ASPD are bad. Fallon had no criminal record and had a successful career as well as a nice family. It is believed that Fallon turned out relatively normal due to his childhood and the fact that he was well loved and cared for (Hancock, 2014, p.

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