I'm a neuroscientist, a professor at the University of California. And over the past 35 years, I've studied behavior on the basis of everything from genes through neurotransmitters, dopamine, things like that, all the way through circuit analysis. So that's what I normally do. But then, for some reason, I got into something else, just recently. And it all grew out of one of my colleagues asking me to analyze a bunch of brains of psychopathic killers.
我是一個神經科學家,在加州大學任職的教授。 在過去35年來, 我致力於研究行為模式, 根據各式各樣的材料,從基因 到神經傳導物質,像多巴胺等, 一直到電路分析。 這些就是我平常在做的事。 但突然間為了某個理由, 最近我投入了另一個領域。 這都是因為我的同事叫我 分析一堆 變態殺人犯的腦。
And so this would be the typical talk I would give. And the question is, "How do you end up with a psychopathic killer?" What I mean by psychopathic killer are these people, these types of people. And so some of the brains that I've studied are people you know about. When I get the brains I don't know what I'm looking at. It's blind experiments. They also gave me normal people and everything.
所以這就是我一般會講的演講內容。 問題是,“你到底是怎麼樣變成變態殺人犯的?” 我所說的變態殺人犯是指 你在畫面上看到的這些人,這類的角色。 所以有些我所研究的腦 是來自你們所知道的人。 當我取得這些腦時,我不知道我要看什麼。 這些是盲性實驗,因為他們也提供正常人的腦和其他所有的材料給我。
So I've looked at about 70 of these. And what came up was a number of pieces of data. So we look at these sorts of things theoretically, on the basis of genetics, and brain damage, and interaction with environment, and exactly how that machine works. So we're interested in exactly where in the brain, and what's the most important part of the brain. So we've been looking at this: the interaction of genes, what's called epigenetic effects, brain damage, and environment, and how these are tied together. And how you end up with a psychopath, and a killer, depends on exactly when the damage occurs. It's really a very precisely timed thing. You get different kinds of psychopaths.
所以我看了約70個腦。 最後得到了幾張數據。 所以我們以理論的角度來看這些數據, 根據遺傳學, 腦部的損傷、和環境間的交互作用, 還有到底腦這個機器是怎麼運作的。 所以我們感興趣的是到底是腦的哪個部位, 以及什麼是腦最重要的部分。 所以這就是我們在觀察的事。 基因、 所謂的表觀遺傳的影響、 腦部損傷、和環境彼此之間的交互作用, 以及這些因子是怎麼串連在一起的。 怎麼會變成一個變態,一個殺人犯 是要看傷害到底是何時發生的。 這真的是和時機有絕對的關係, 也會造成不一樣的心理變態。
So we're going along with this. And here's, just to give you the pattern. The pattern is that those people, every one of them I looked at, who was a murderer, and was a serial killer, had damage to their orbital cortex, which is right above the eyes, the orbits, and also the interior part of the temporal lobe. So there is the pattern that every one of them had, but they all were a little different too. They had other sorts of brain damage. A key thing is that the major violence genes, it's called the MAO-A gene.
所以我們也相信這樣的理論。這張圖,只是要告訴你腦部的圖像模式是如何。 這些模式說明這些人,每一個我觀察過的人, 如果是殺人犯,或是連續殺人犯, 他們的眼眶皮質都有受損。 也就是眼睛正上方的眼眶, 還有顳葉內部。 這是他們每一個人都存在的模式。 但是每個人也有一些不同, 他們還有一些別的腦部傷害。 最關鍵的是來自 主要暴力基因的影響, 像是 MAO-A 基因。
And there is a variant of this gene that is in the normal population. Some of you have this. And it's sex-linked. It's on the X chromosome. And so in this way you can only get it from your mother. And in fact this is probably why mostly men, boys, are psychopathic killers, or are very aggressive. Because a daughter can get one X from the father, one X from the mother, it's kind of diluted out. But for a son, he can only get the X chromosome from his mother.
這基因在正常人中有很多型態, 你們之中就有些人有這個基因。而且它是性聯遺傳, 它位在X染色體上,因此, 你只會從你的母親那裏獲得這基因。 事實上,這可能是為什麼大部分的變態殺人犯 或是非常喜歡挑釁攻擊的人, 都是男性的原因。 因為女兒會從父親那裏得到一個X染色體, 從母親獲得另一個X染色體,所以這基因表現有點被稀釋掉了。 但如果是兒子,他只會從 母親處獲得X染色體。
So this is how it's passed from mother to son. And it has to do with too much brain serotonin during development, which is kind of interesting because serotonin is supposed to make you calm and relaxed. But if you have this gene, in utero your brain is bathed in this, so your whole brain becomes insensitive to serotonin, so it doesn't work later on in life.
這就是這基因從母親傳到兒子的方式。 這也和發展時期腦部的血清素有非常大的關係。 這一點很有趣,因為血清素 本來應該會讓你冷靜和放鬆, 但是如果你有這個基因,在子宮內 你的腦就沉浸在血清素中。 所以你整個腦對血清素就變得麻木不敏感, 使得它在往後的生命中失去作用。
And I'd given this one talk in Israel, just this past year. And it does have some consequences. Theoretically what this means is that in order to express this gene, in a violent way, very early on, before puberty, you have to be involved in something that is really traumatic -- not a little stress, not being spanked or something, but really seeing violence, or being involved in it, in 3D. Right? That's how the mirror neuron system works.
就在去年, 我也曾在以色列做過這個演講。 這背後當然是有其一定重要的影響性。 理論上這表示的是, 如果要讓這個基因 以暴力的方式表現的話, 在很小的時候,在青春期之前, 一定要經歷過對你來說是很慘痛的事, 不是一點點壓力,也不是被打屁股這類的小事。 而是真的親眼見到暴力, 或是被捲入其中,真正立體真實的經歷。 了解嗎?這就是鏡像神經元系統作用的方式。
And so, if you have that gene, and you see a lot of violence in a certain situation, this is the recipe for disaster, absolute disaster. And what I think might happen in these areas of the world, where we have constant violence, you end up having generations of kids that are seeing all this violence. And if I was a young girl, somewhere in a violent area, you know, a 14 year old, and I want to find a mate, I'd find some tough guy, right, to protect me. Well what the problem is this tends to concentrate these genes. And now the boys and the girls get them. So I think after several generations, and here is the idea, we really have a tinderbox.
因此,如果你有這個基因, 然後你在某種狀態下 親眼目睹了很多的暴力事件, 這就是引發悲劇的處方了,絕對是個災難。 我認為世界上這些充滿暴力 的地區可能帶來的後果就是, 世世代代的小孩 他們都得目睹週遭的這些暴力。 假設我是一個生長在暴力籠罩地區的女孩, 一個14歲的小女孩,如果我要找個對象, 我當然會要找個很強壯,會保護我的男生,對吧! 這樣帶來的問題就是,這些暴力基因就很容易就被集中在一起, 而這些男孩和女孩都會遺傳到這些基因, 我想在幾代之後, 我們就真的會有個暴力的引爆箱了。
So that was the idea. But then my mother said to me, "I hear you've been going around talking about psychopathic killers. And you're talking as if you come from a normal family." I said, "What the hell are you talking about?" She then told me about our own family tree. Now she blamed this on my father's side, of course. This was one of these cases, because she has no violence in her background, but my father did.
這就是大概的概念。 但是有一天我媽媽對我說:「聽說你到處演講, 討論關於變態殺人犯的事。 然後你說得好像你是來自一個正常的家庭一樣。」 我回答:「你到底在說什麼鬼?」 她才告訴我關於我自己的族譜。 但是當然她把過錯都推到我爸爸那邊的家庭。 這就是這種狀況中的一個例子,因為她的家庭背景並沒有暴力的歷史, 但是我父親這邊有。
Well she said, "There is good news and bad news. One of your cousins is Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell university. But the bad news is that your cousin is also Lizzie Borden.
她就說:「有好消息也有壞消息。 好消息是,你的表哥之一叫Ezra Cornell,是康乃爾大學的創辦人。 但壞消息是,你另一個表姊叫Lizzi Borden。」
Now I said, "Okay, so what? We have Lizzie."
我就說:「好啊,我們有 Lizzi 又怎麼樣?」
She goes, "No it gets worse, read this book."
她回答:「狀況是越來越糟,看看這本書。」
And here is this "Killed Strangely," and it's this historical book. And the first murder of a mother by a son was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Okay, so that's the first case of matricide. And that book is very interesting. Because it's about witch trials, and how people thought back then.
就是這本 “離奇謀殺案”,這是本描述歷史的書。 第一樁媽媽被兒子殺死的 謀殺案, 兇手就是我的曾曾曾曾曾曾曾祖父。 好啦,這就是第一宗弒母案。 這本書其實很有趣,它是在講女巫的審判, 還有當時的人們的思想。
But it doesn't stop there. There were seven more men, on my father's side, starting then, Cornells, that were all murderers. Okay, now this gives one a little pause. (Laughter) Because my father himself, and my three uncles, in World War II, were all conscientious objectors, all pussycats. But every once in a while, like Lizzie Borden, like three times a century, and we're kind of due. (Laughter)
事情不是簡單到此而已, 還有七名男士,是我父親那邊的親戚, 從康乃爾家族那個時候開始,全都是殺人犯。 到這裡,不得不讓你停頓一下。 (笑聲) 因為我父親自己, 還有我三個叔叔,在第二次世界大戰期間, 他們都是反戰主義者,都是很溫和的人。 但是每隔一陣子就會冒出個Lizzi Borden,大約是每一百年出三個。 現在好像時間差不多到了。 (笑聲)
So the moral of the story is: people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But more likely is this. (Laughter) And we had to take action. Now our kids found out about it. And they all seemed to be OK. But our grandkids are going to be kind of concerned here. So what we've done is I've started to do PET scans of everybody in the family. (Laughter) We started to do PET scans, EEGs and genetic analysis to see where the bad news is. Now the only person -- it turns out one son and one daughter, siblings, didn't get along and their patterns are exactly the same. They have the same brain, and the same EEG. And now they are close as can be. But there's gonna be bad news somewhere. And we don't know where it's going to pop up. So that's my talk. (Laughter)
所以這個故事的寓意就是: 住在玻璃屋裡的人不要互擲石頭。 但其實真正的是;「我不管別人知道什麼關於我的事,只要我媽永遠都不發現就好。」 (笑聲) 所以我們也不得不採取一些行動,尤其是現在我們的小孩都知道發生什麼事。 他們看起來都沒什麼問題, 但是我們的孫子輩可能是我們要注意的。 所以我們做的就是我開始對家裡所有的人 進行PET掃描 (正子掃描) 。 (笑聲) 我們做了PET掃描、EEG (腦波圖)、還有遺傳分析, 看看問題出在哪裡。 結果唯一有問題的是 一對兄妹。 他們以前無法和睦相處,且他們的腦部掃描有同樣的模式圖像。 他們有同樣的大腦,同樣的腦波圖。 但是他們現在比任何人的關係都緊密。 不過將來一定會在某些地方出問題, 只是我們不知道它什麼時麼時候會跑出來。 這就是我的演講。 (笑聲)