Because of what scientists know about emotions in the brain, they theorize that alexithymia may either relate to a malfunctioning in the right hemisphere or an overactive left hemisphere (leaving the right hemisphere unable to compensate). Alexithymia is the inability to understand or express emotion. If a person is on the low end of the emotional intelligence spectrum, he or she may have a condition known as alexithymia. If these psychopaths were to be tested for IQ, they would likely show up as normal, but it's in a lack of emotional intelligence that we see the disturbances in brain health. Hare's work seems to indicate that psychopaths have abnormal brain functions in areas related to processing emotion and language - meaning that there's a neurological rationale for some heinous crimes, as opposed to some environmental factor such as child abuse. Hare described these psychopaths as "emotionally color-blind" to Maclean's magazine in 1996. When Hare monitored psychopaths' brain waves while they examined certain words, including those that bring up a host of emotions for most people, he found that there was no activity in the parts of the brain involved in emotion. The profile of a psychopath includes impulsivity, lofty goals without the discipline or focus to achieve them, a propensity for boredom, no close personal attachments and of course, a lack of empathy. While psychopaths remain intellectually aware of society's rules, they lack emotional intelligence. In 1991, Canadian psychologist Robert Hare released a study indicating that psychopaths may have different brains from the rest of us.
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