And then, of course, a child may die as an extension of child abuse. So there's nothing…I think this chapter in my book, some readers have said they had to read it with their eyes closed because these are not easy, not easy cases to digest. But there is a pattern, there is a typology, you could say, and you can break down these horrific offences into certain scenarios that seem to crop up with sort of disturbing regularity, you might say. I’ve had to narrow my list of subjects down but the really interesting elements that people want to know are still there.”

James Blair, an American researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, as suggested that the neurobiology of the brain explains the reduced 'moral reasoning' in psychopaths. The amygdala, a part of the brain deep in the temporal lobe, has been shown in research to be a key structure in the processing of memory, decision-making and emotional responses, such as disgust, fear, anxiety and aggression. In psychopaths the amygdala fails to send the correct signals to the decision-making brain structures ... But this does not explain everything, we need to understand how life experiences may provide a link between brain and behaviour. Again, it bears repeating that such killings are extremely rare, on two counts: postpartum psychosis is itself rare, occurring in 1 to 2 in 1,000 births; and for the result to be the death of a child is rarer still.

Sana Qadar: I can't imagine what it's like to confront that for the first time. How did that affect you? Dr. Michelle Wards tries to get inside the mind of death row inmate Travis Runnels who slit his supervisor's throat while behind bars. View Details

As Taylor helps us understand what lies inside the minds of those charged with murder - both prisoners he has assessed and patients he has treated - he presents us with the most important challenge of how can we even begin to comprehend the darkest of human deeds, and why it is so vital that we try? Richard Taylor: I hope so. You know, these are dark subject areas, but I hope by helping understand how an individual who may have a tragic story can end up committing a homicide, a murder…we're not necessarily condoning them, but perhaps we can understand them a bit more. And then you understand a bit more about human nature and human behaviour. Once I extended my practice beyond working on criminal trials and began appearing as an expert witness in family courts and in other types of legal proceedings, the limitations of an explanation based on a diagnosis or a list of causal factors became clear. It would be of little assistance to the family courts in deciding about the safe care of a child if I were to just present symptom names and the associated diagnostic label. From my assessment, I need to acquire an understanding of that person’s subjective experience – their thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions – so that I can try to explain not only why they had behaved as they had, but also the circumstances that may increase the chances they would behave in that way again. This is a common diagnosis in Holloway (Prison). It involves unstable and intense relationships; unstable self-image; impulsivity; recurrent suicidal behaviour, threats or self-mutilating behaviour, affective (mood) instability. BPD almost always arises after serious childhood abuse of one form or another.. Examining brain scans of more than 800 incarcerated men, new research co-authored by a leading University of Chicago neuroscientist found that individuals who had committed or attempted homicide had reduced gray matter when compared to those involved in other offenses. Those reductions were especially apparent in regions of the brain associated with emotional processing, behavioral control and social cognition.Trial consultant Dr. Michelle Ward goes behind prison walls to investigate Jason Bohn's claim that he cannot remember strangling his girlfriend to death. View Details personal hair stylist: Dr. Michelle Ward / personal makeup artist: Dr. Michelle Ward (11 episodes, 2015-2016) In my inexperience, I thought it obvious that, as this was a case of a mother killing a newborn baby, ‘the balance of her mind must have been disturbed’ – still the legal criteria for infanticide. How Do Neural Implants Work? – IEEE Spectrum. IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/what-is-neural-implant-neuromodulation-brain-implants-electroceuticals-neuralink-definition-examples In his twenty-six years in the field, Richard Taylor has worked on well over a hundred murder cases, with victims and perpetrators from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, Taylor draws on some of the most tragic, horrific and illuminating of these cases - as well as dark secrets from his own family's past - to explore some of the questions he grapples with every day:

Bundy and Wright were ­predatory killers, who took the opportunity to strike, believing they wouldn’t be caught. Interested in taking your study of the mind to the next level? Find out more about our Oxford Psychology Summer School. I was realising at this early stage that I’d have to find a branch of medicine which was more than skin-deep. Psychiatry was reeling me in.foundling, abandoned at birth and found in a plastic bag on the doorstep of a hospital before going on to short-term foster placements and a children’s home. If the relationship has ended and they feel rejected, they then struggle to come to terms with this and obsess about the victim.” Richard Taylor: But I think the take-home message is that psychotic homicide is fairly consistent, and it represents something about how common serious mental illness is. This is a bit of a fringe notion and not an official psychiatric diagnosis. Machiavellianism refers to the use of self-interest strategies, such as deceit, flattery and emotional detachment, to manipulate social and interpersonal interactions. The combination of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy is referred to as the 'dark triad' of personality traits and is thought to be associated with adverse workplace behaviours and financial misbehaviour.

Children killed by parents or carers as an extension of child abuse was a hot topic in the media while I was at Holloway, with the deaths of Victoria Climbié and Baby P in north London attracting blanket media attention. The publicity around those cases focused almost exclusively on the perceived This is an edited extract from Dangerous Minds: A Forensic Psychiatrist’s Quest to Understand Violence by Taj Nathan, published by John Murray on 24 June and available at guardianbookshop.com A dark, fascinating and often surprising glimpse into the minds of those who kill, from a forensic psychiatrist who's seen it all' Rob Williams, writer of BBC's The Victim Unlike other NF I’ve read of a similar calibre, this doesn’t focus too much on the scientific side of things. Of course it explains the inner workings of the brain but there is a much heavier focus on the cases rather than the causes. Sana Qadar: So Jonathan Brooks killed his mother, in his case during an episode of psychosis. But if you turn that scenario on its head, you get mothers who kill their children. That's something Dr Taylor encounters more often than you'd think.

The more we understand about the brain, the more cases like Harold’s will be transformed from criminal into medical matters. I'm Sana Qadar and you're listening to All in the Mind. Today, a peek inside the minds of murderers. unexplained symptoms. When the child had been admitted to a paediatric ward for observation, Tamara had tampered with the drip, causing a life-threatening infection by contamination of the infusion, and putting her child in intensive care. Next Tamara suffered an apparent seizure in police custody and was transferred to the Mayday emergency room.