Speaker 1: Previously on Happy Face.
Speaker 2: Meeting Melissa's mom in person, I was really taken aback
Speaker 2: by the fact that they don't look alike. She absolutely
Speaker 2: looks like her.
Speaker 3: Father, Keith Fell in high school. I believe it was
Speaker 3: twenty five feet when they interview killers. They have found
Speaker 3: that a large percentage of them damaged their frontal lobe
Speaker 3: before they were twenty two, changes their whole personality.
Speaker 1: I went back to my truck and rehearsed the lies
Speaker 1: I planned to tell when I was arrested. What made
Speaker 1: me cross the line into murder? Maybe it was my nature.
Speaker 4: There was just this thing that people said in the family.
Speaker 4: They would say, Oh, that's just Keith, That's just how
Speaker 4: Keith is, and it seemed to be acceptable.
Speaker 5: Did you feel you're in control?
Speaker 6: Did you just.
Speaker 7: Lose it with his soliders lost?
Speaker 6: I didn't.
Speaker 8: I don't think they had anything to do with control
Speaker 8: and just had paybacks a bitch, you know.
Speaker 7: And I just grabbed him start wailing. Of course, I
Speaker 7: didn't know him to stop.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 7: I was going to beat him to death.
Speaker 4: I'm scared I look like him.
Speaker 7: I came from here, That's okay.
Speaker 2: My heart is so turned off.
Speaker 4: I'm afraid I've built like him.
Speaker 9: In the vies with the sun. I don't know, shine oh.
Speaker 4: Oh, I threw. The worst case scenario about tomorrow when
Speaker 4: I meet with doctor Fallon is that I'm going to
Speaker 4: find out that biologically my brain is wired exactly the
Speaker 4: same as my dad.
Speaker 2: Melissa's deepest fear is that somewhere in the threads of
Speaker 2: her DNA are the same miswired strands that eventually led
Speaker 2: her father to kill I'm Lauren brag Pacheco, and this
Speaker 2: is happy face.
Speaker 4: I'm prepared for both ways that it will like. I
Speaker 4: know I'm a flawed human being. I know that I
Speaker 4: sometimes can get narcissistic like everybody else. I know sometimes
Speaker 4: I can be selfish like everybody else. I know that
Speaker 4: sometimes I forget to say the right thing to someone,
Speaker 4: or to offer the hug when they needed it. I
Speaker 4: know that sometimes I laugh at inappropriate things at the
Speaker 4: inappropriate time. I know sometimes I can be insensitive. I
Speaker 4: know that, but that's not all the time. And I
Speaker 4: know I'm not a bad person. And I can see
Speaker 4: that other people are flawed too and make mistakes to
Speaker 4: and that's what makes me give some comfort. Then maybe
Speaker 4: I'm not a psychopath. Is that all of these things
Speaker 4: that I've been looking for are just common traits amongst
Speaker 4: us all. Maybe I'm just as flawed as everybody.
Speaker 2: Even if you are, you're going to realize that it
Speaker 2: doesn't change any of those things. You're a good person.
Speaker 2: You would never do what your father's done, and you
Speaker 2: could never be what he is. Last week, Melissa had
Speaker 2: a pet scan to determine if her brain had the
Speaker 2: neurological markers associated with psychopathy.
Speaker 4: Today is a really big day for me. It's a
Speaker 4: moment that.
Speaker 10: I am coming face to face with something I've been
Speaker 10: running away from.
Speaker 2: Learning about.
Speaker 10: A hard time sleeping last night, because today I find
Speaker 10: out if my worst fears and insecurities are true. My
Speaker 10: dad and I had a very close relationship, almost a
Speaker 10: psychic connection, and it makes me wonder if my connection
Speaker 10: with my dad was because our brains are similar, or
Speaker 10: our makeup is similar, if I'm capable of being like
Speaker 10: my dad, But I don't know. Maybe doctor Felon can
Speaker 10: explain to me the difference between the brain of a
Speaker 10: serial killer and the brain of a psychopath. Maybe they're different,
Speaker 10: but in my mind right now, they're one and the same,
Speaker 10: and I'm nervous about that.
Speaker 8: Are you ready to face it today?
Speaker 10: I think that in the past I wasn't in a
Speaker 10: space where I could accept the results. I feel so
Speaker 10: much more secure with who I am. I feel like
Speaker 10: with Don's acceptance of who I am and knowing that
Speaker 10: my heart is different than if my brain does prove
Speaker 10: to be similar to my father, that at least my
Speaker 10: heart is different. I'm actually you know, when I think
Speaker 10: of the word psychopath, I think of someone who is
Speaker 10: a killer, someone who's cold hearted, someone who is evil,
Speaker 10: And maybe that term is the problem.
Speaker 2: Melissa's definition of a psychopath is a description of her father.
Speaker 2: Keith's definition, however, differs.
Speaker 5: I want to know what happens in prison's mind from
Speaker 5: point to point in their life.
Speaker 6: I don't think person who's psychopath all their life? Yeah, no, No,
Speaker 6: I think it's it's something they grow into. Yeah, And
Speaker 6: it's a behavior pattern they grow into, and it's not
Speaker 6: a It's like we live normal lives up to a
Speaker 6: point and we make that conscious decision to go a
Speaker 6: certain way, and then it's like watching Planet of the Age,
Speaker 6: everything goes different directions. You don't turn right or turn
Speaker 6: possibilities around it.
Speaker 4: What's going through your head right now? Do you know
Speaker 4: what to expect.
Speaker 10: The doctor has my brain scans, and maybe I find
Speaker 10: out that I am a psychopath, or maybe I find
Speaker 10: out I have a brain tumor, or maybe I might
Speaker 10: have a perfectly healthy brain.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 10: I could be walking into anything actually today, but.
Speaker 4: I think knowing is better than not knowing.
Speaker 7: Why does it matter?
Speaker 2: What do you hope you're going to gain from today?
Speaker 4: For me, why it matters is for a lot of people,
Speaker 4: I feel like I've been under a microscope and I
Speaker 4: really haven't had any tools to combat what they say.
Speaker 4: But at this point, I'm almost I really don't even
Speaker 4: care what other people think.
Speaker 10: This is for my self awareness. This is for me
Speaker 10: to be able to know how I relate to the world.
Speaker 2: Doctor James Fallen is a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry
Speaker 2: and human behavior at the University of California Irvine School
Speaker 2: of Medicine. I had first read about him years ago
Speaker 2: in a fascinating article in The Atlantic titled Life as
Speaker 2: a Non Violent Psychopath. In it, he shares his own
Speaker 2: incredible experience of accidentally discovering he possessed the brain imaging
Speaker 2: pattern and genetic makeup of a full blown psychopath while
Speaker 2: conducting unrelated research, and how that knowledge impacted his life
Speaker 2: and relationships. When Melissa shared her fears with me about
Speaker 2: her own potential psychopathy, I immediately reached out to Fallin.
Speaker 2: I felt if anyone could walk Melissa through her pet
Speaker 2: scan and her results, doctor Fallen would be the perfect
Speaker 2: person for the job.
Speaker 9: Allen, Hi, how you go?
Speaker 7: Cat you out?
Speaker 4: Nice to meet you, Marrick, Kay, great, thank you.
Speaker 7: So this is our house.
Speaker 2: Doctor Fallon's house was bright and cheerful. The exterior was
Speaker 2: surrounded by colorful, well tended plants and flowers, and the
Speaker 2: inside was filled with family photos and art, he explained
Speaker 2: was mostly created by various family members. It felt like
Speaker 2: a welcoming, creative place.
Speaker 5: This is my lab, yeah, because I do analysis. We
Speaker 5: play experiments here. So anyway, there's where we live. And
Speaker 5: I was just looking at some of the slides. Just
Speaker 5: got your slides, you know, your pet scan?
Speaker 4: Did you imagine that I'm nervous? Well, I don't know
Speaker 4: what you know about my background.
Speaker 7: I know who your dad is, certainly, but I don't
Speaker 7: know much about you.
Speaker 5: And I didn't want to know too much about you,
Speaker 5: you know, I just because I didn't want to.
Speaker 7: I didn't want to look at the scan with some
Speaker 7: idea of who you were. Okay, that's the idea. The
Speaker 7: less I know going in the better. Okay.
Speaker 2: Okay again, because doctor Fallon's own brain exhibits indicators of psychopathy,
Speaker 2: we felt he had the ideal insight and expertise to
Speaker 2: help Melissa navigate and process her PET scan results. Regardless
Speaker 2: of what they revealed.
Speaker 5: The behaviors are not in themselves evil. It's the context
Speaker 5: that we consider making him evil, and that context is
Speaker 5: defined differently in different societies. All societies are not the same,
Speaker 5: So no absolute behaviors are good and bad for these things.
Speaker 5: So it's not just the genes you have, because I
Speaker 5: mean I inherited all these psychopath related genes.
Speaker 7: I don't have much anxiety.
Speaker 5: If I'm caught by somebody doing something, I can look
Speaker 5: them in the face and they go, he's completely innocent.
Speaker 7: So you can inherit them.
Speaker 5: But if you've been treated okay, and especially with love,
Speaker 5: it kind of negates that effect. All you do is
Speaker 5: become assertive. Low anxiety kind of up all the time.
Speaker 5: You could be glib and all this stuff like that
Speaker 5: you can sell like a salesman, but it comes across
Speaker 5: as an earnest in an earnest way.
Speaker 4: So are you a psychopath?
Speaker 5: I'm not a categorical psychopath. I mean I've been analyzed.
Speaker 5: I've been psychiatrically analyzed. And one of the interesting reads
Speaker 5: I was looking at, you know, one of the diagnoses,
Speaker 5: and it was basically the summary is that here's someone
Speaker 5: who has all the thoughts and urges and dreams and
Speaker 5: everything that a full blown psychopath has, but he never
Speaker 5: acts them out.
Speaker 7: Now, I wouldn't have known that.
Speaker 5: I thought everybody was having these thoughts and really crazy
Speaker 5: intense scared the hell out of people with them. I
Speaker 5: always assumed because it was in my head everybody was
Speaker 5: thinking this way, and they're not. The difference is that
Speaker 5: I never act him out. I mean, I got absolutely
Speaker 5: clean record, and I got a family. I'm still dating
Speaker 5: the girl I dated at twelve years old. We were
Speaker 5: both twelve, and we've been married forever, and I've had
Speaker 5: a really great job forever, and I have kids and
Speaker 5: grandkids and I've a normal family life. But somehow, and
Speaker 5: two of the psychiatrists couldn't figure out why I was
Speaker 5: not like a really bad guy because I have all
Speaker 5: these other the genetics, the brain pattern and some of
Speaker 5: the traits by and I just don't act the bad
Speaker 5: stuff out. I'm a wonderful guy.
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm.
Speaker 10: Relating to you right now because I feel like I'm
Speaker 10: a great girl.
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm a great person.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I think I'm terrific.
Speaker 5: And it's not that I don't have faults, but overall,
Speaker 5: I said, who wouldn't like to be around me?
Speaker 7: You know? It's like I was up grade.
Speaker 5: I was like, and so I asked started with my
Speaker 5: wife and I asked her, I said, you got to
Speaker 5: tell me, now, really, what do you think of me?
Speaker 5: I mean, tell me I'm not going to get mad
Speaker 5: or anything. And I did that with my mother, my brothers,
Speaker 5: my sister, my kids.
Speaker 10: A bravery to hear what people really because I didn't
Speaker 10: really care.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, for me, it was part of
Speaker 5: the way it is. I just was interested. I being
Speaker 5: a scientist, you're able to say, I'm just scientists. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And they all told me the same thing. They said,
Speaker 5: you do really psychopathic things and you don't even realize it.
Speaker 4: Did they give you examples?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, in great detail. I put people at
Speaker 5: risk for the fun of it. And it's not like
Speaker 5: strangers need to worry about me, But if you become
Speaker 5: close to me, you gotta worry because I'll get you
Speaker 5: to do something. I'm the person that runs with the
Speaker 5: bulls and tries to get you to run with me.
Speaker 5: That's not psychopathic, but I do it all the time,
Speaker 5: and I put my people close to me and friends
Speaker 5: at risk. I lived in East Africa and I went
Speaker 5: trout fishing, brought my son, and I brought them into
Speaker 5: a place I knew the werelions, and I said, there's
Speaker 5: only a five percent chance we're going to get attacked,
Speaker 5: But isn't it going to be fun? So I was,
Speaker 5: I'm trying to kill them, but it was for the thrill.
Speaker 5: So having the genes per se is not the death sentence.
Speaker 5: What happens early to regulate those genes, which is fixed.
Speaker 5: Is the problem is people always want to know what
Speaker 5: percent of our behavior is determined by genes nature and
Speaker 5: how much is by environment nurture. And it's almost the
Speaker 5: wrong way to ask the question, as it turns out.
Speaker 5: And so the idea is, if you have the genes,
Speaker 5: if the gun is loaded with those alleles that tend
Speaker 5: to give you those traits, and your abuse that fixes
Speaker 5: those and in that case, the environment means everything.
Speaker 4: So in my dad's case, he had the genes and
Speaker 4: had the environment.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean this is almost every dictator, you know, really
Speaker 5: aggressive dictator, and every serial killer I looked that I
Speaker 5: you know, could find as much information were abused early
Speaker 5: and they had in their family these traits. The only
Speaker 5: one who claims he was never abused was Polpot. He
Speaker 5: was the only one. I don't believe him. I think
Speaker 5: you know a lot of sometimes they lie.
Speaker 4: I'm learning about that with my dad. That through this journey.
Speaker 4: What has been unique about my dad is that he
Speaker 4: says one thing and what he does is another thing.
Speaker 4: But he's so believable and what he says that people
Speaker 4: don't look at what he does.
Speaker 7: That's it.
Speaker 4: That's and being raised with that, like I only saw
Speaker 4: what he did and believed him too. And so as
Speaker 4: I've been going on this journey, I've been figuring out
Speaker 4: that it's not what he says that is what he does,
Speaker 4: but it's exactly what you just said is how he said.
Speaker 4: It was just so matter of fact and straight face
Speaker 4: that you just don't even I guess, well.
Speaker 7: This is the charm of it. This is real.
Speaker 5: A psychopaths or people, well even narcissistic personality disorder can
Speaker 5: do it with such earnestness and glibness and no anxiety.
Speaker 5: You absolutely believe them. You believe them before you believe anybody.
Speaker 5: And that's what makes it so pernicious and insidious. You know,
Speaker 5: in fact, they you know, a real psychopath doesn't really
Speaker 5: believe what they're doing is bad.
Speaker 7: It's kind of just whereas a sociopath knows what they're
Speaker 7: doing is wrong.
Speaker 4: Oh there's a difference.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, well everybody's got a different definition. But then
Speaker 5: usually people and going they're kind of the same. They're not,
Speaker 5: you know, a real psychopath, we call a primary psychopath.
Speaker 5: And these are the ones that are clinically psychopaths that
Speaker 5: have no moral reasoning, have no guilt, they have no remorse.
Speaker 5: So what makes the personality disorders so different than other
Speaker 5: psychiatric disorders is that people don't know what they're doing
Speaker 5: is wrong or different. And I'll give you an example.
Speaker 5: We all know somebody who is obsessive and compulsive. In fact,
Speaker 5: a bunch of people have OCD obsessive compulsive disorder. But
Speaker 5: there are people with OCDPD, the personality disorder variant of this,
Speaker 5: so they have obsessive compulsive personality disorder. The people with
Speaker 5: OCD doing the crazy things every time they walk by
Speaker 5: the three times and they skip over.
Speaker 7: They know what they're doing is crazy, but they can't
Speaker 7: stop it.
Speaker 5: Okay, The people with OCDPD the percentage disorder, thinks what
Speaker 5: they're doing is perfectly okay and good and works. Big difference, right, So,
Speaker 5: superficially the behaviors are the same, but what happens inside
Speaker 5: and how they're generating what they mean are completely different. Now,
Speaker 5: somebody with sociopathy like we're talking about, which it's called
Speaker 5: the secondary psychopath, they know what they're doing is wrong.
Speaker 5: They do have remorse, they do have guilt, they do
Speaker 5: have anxiety, but they're still driven to do those behaviors.
Speaker 5: So both the psychopath and a sociopath can do the
Speaker 5: exact same thing, murder, rape, and everything, different reasons, and
Speaker 5: a lot of times the psychopath does it for fun.
Speaker 5: It's game. It's just manipulation. They're playing a game with things,
Speaker 5: whereas a sociopath a lot of time could be the loser,
Speaker 5: who's getting even with all the women of the world
Speaker 5: or all the athletes of the world, were all you know,
Speaker 5: all the blondes in the world, and it.
Speaker 7: Goes on and on and on.
Speaker 5: There's always but those people can be maybe not wired
Speaker 5: genetically for psychopathy, but they were like bullied when they're eight, nine,
Speaker 5: ten years old.
Speaker 7: A lot of times these are bullied people.
Speaker 5: But if you are wired for it and you're bullied,
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just terrible.
Speaker 8: See will my father beat me? I wondered what he
Speaker 8: was feeling when he beat me? Like what was there
Speaker 8: so gratifying to him to beat the shit out of
Speaker 8: me and then send me to bed like nothing happened,
Speaker 8: and then go back in and do what he wanted
Speaker 8: to do with mom or whatever, or just go on
Speaker 8: with life, and then the next day like nothing happens.
Speaker 6: He's okay.
Speaker 8: Now when I'm killing my victim, I'm sitting there going like, now,
Speaker 8: is this what my father felt when he beat the
Speaker 8: shit out of me? Is this the feeling he got?
Speaker 9: You?
Speaker 8: Getting answered to that I already didn't.
Speaker 2: The question remains, does trauma trigger violent psychopathy or is
Speaker 2: it a domino effect?
Speaker 5: The thing is there's so many of these what are
Speaker 5: called cluster B personality disorders. These are the ones that
Speaker 5: are dangerous to other people, like histrionic, these are people
Speaker 5: that are always using sex to manipulate people and they're
Speaker 5: really nasty be around. And also narcissistic personality disorder and psychopathy,
Speaker 5: and so for those, what you're doing is basically looking
Speaker 5: at all these traits, ten fifteen to twenty traits, and
Speaker 5: the standard thing is you take them. You score each
Speaker 5: one of those traits from zero to two. Zero, let's
Speaker 5: say zero narcissism one is kind of pretty narcissistic. Two
Speaker 5: always narcissistic, like really bad. And you take all these
Speaker 5: numbers and add them up, and if it's above a threshold,
Speaker 5: like for psychopathy, it's above twenty eight or thirty, anything
Speaker 5: from twenty eight thirty to forty, it's a full blown psychopath.
Speaker 5: If you have a psychopath that's forty, you're talking about
Speaker 5: such a dangerous person. I've been tested and I'm not
Speaker 5: really a psychopath because I'm not a full blown psychopath,
Speaker 5: but I'm like right on the edge, you know, I
Speaker 5: score in the twenties every time. What I lack is
Speaker 5: the criminality and the really anti social stuff.
Speaker 7: I really have no interest in hurting people.
Speaker 4: When I think of psychopath it seems to have a
Speaker 4: negative label. Sure, but is it actually a good thing
Speaker 4: to have for is it possible it could be good?
Speaker 5: Well, you know full blown psychopaths, you know the thirty
Speaker 5: and above and a hair scale or on a number
Speaker 5: of scales. It's kind of never a good thing because
Speaker 5: a lot of times they never make.
Speaker 7: It past their teens or twenties.
Speaker 5: They're in prison, and they can have a lot of
Speaker 5: disorganized behavior. But people who are borderline or pro socials
Speaker 5: that are not quite clinically there a lot of those
Speaker 5: traits are very very useful for navigating and becoming successful.
Speaker 5: But there are the traits. One of the two main
Speaker 5: groups of traits factors is called fearless dominance, and fearless
Speaker 5: dominance is a bunch of traits, but it's basically the
Speaker 5: person walks into the room and they got that light
Speaker 5: around him. People interpreted his charisma. They walk fearlessly. They'll
Speaker 5: take chances, but they win. They know how to take
Speaker 5: statistical scientific chances and win. But they'll take risks and
Speaker 5: they do quite well, and people sense it. People sense
Speaker 5: it immediately, So they're very attracted to it. And so
Speaker 5: that's a major psychopathic trait. And if you look at
Speaker 5: the study of done of US presidents from George Washington
Speaker 5: on those that scored the highest from their biographers and
Speaker 5: knew all about them, the ones that scored highest and
Speaker 5: fearless dominance. The top ones are like Teddy Roosevelt, JFK.
Speaker 5: Bill Clinton. They're thought to have charisma and great abilities
Speaker 5: as leaders, but they have the highest psychopathy ratings. So
Speaker 5: people are attracted to it. I mean, this is one
Speaker 5: of the reasons why psychopathy is always with us, because
Speaker 5: people are attracted to it.
Speaker 7: These are people who will take chances.
Speaker 5: You want that person on your side, so I don't
Speaker 5: care if he's a bad ass. I want him to
Speaker 5: be my badass. I want them to be my crook,
Speaker 5: my thief, you know. And so the successive psychopaths, especially
Speaker 5: the pro social or borderline pro social psychopaths, is a
Speaker 5: reflection of people's own lack of morals, I think, because
Speaker 5: to win, they want them on their side, even though
Speaker 5: they know that they're probably going to do. It's like,
Speaker 5: don't tell me what you did, just win, you know.
Speaker 5: Those traits are very much enjoyed and beloved by people.
Speaker 5: So you said, what are you complaining about? But you know,
Speaker 5: if you want to find out if you're a psychopath,
Speaker 5: you got to go talk to a psychologists psychiatrist who's
Speaker 5: an expert in personality disorders.
Speaker 7: There's no other way.
Speaker 5: But once you are found out to have something, then
Speaker 5: we can use the brain scans and the genetics to
Speaker 5: note why you're that way.
Speaker 8: This puts you in another world because you see, people
Speaker 8: aren't expected to murder people.
Speaker 6: And when you murder.
Speaker 8: Someone and you're you're you have their life in your hand,
Speaker 8: you just think of no one else has been there
Speaker 8: about you, and and think of all the all your feelings,
Speaker 8: all your emotions put all on the one that the
Speaker 8: hurt that you have, and the love that you have,
Speaker 8: and joy and hate and just everything all your emotions
Speaker 8: you could ever put together.
Speaker 7: And that's what murder's like.
Speaker 2: After Fallen was able to give an evolutionary and historical
Speaker 2: ex explanation of psychopathy, Melissa was finally ready to face
Speaker 2: and accept her results.
Speaker 5: So I gave you this kind of a general like
Speaker 5: how we do stuff, you know, look on the science
Speaker 5: and the biological psychiatry of it. And so would you
Speaker 5: like to know what I saw by looking at your scans?
Speaker 10: I would love to I'm ready you sure, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 10: absolutely ready.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think after talking with you, I now see
Speaker 4: that it might not necessarily be a bad thing.
Speaker 5: But I'm just curious now, I'm just I want to
Speaker 5: know such a psychopathy can be a very useful thing,
Speaker 5: and it does make it criminal or bad, but you
Speaker 5: can still be a pain.
Speaker 7: And he has to be around.
Speaker 5: With some of these, right, I mean really can, So
Speaker 5: you got to be then You've got to expect that
Speaker 5: from people.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm ready, I'm ready, I'll follow you.
Speaker 2: Doctor Fallon's office was filled with eclectic art he'd gathered
Speaker 2: during his trap or was given over the years. It
Speaker 2: also showcased some of his own signature paintings, which tended
Speaker 2: to involve some very interesting and more than slightly disturbing
Speaker 2: depictions of clowns, demented looking clowns.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, So there's many ways to get a pet
Speaker 5: scan or a functional MRI. You can get a cat
Speaker 5: scan or a regular MRI that just looks at the anatomy.
Speaker 5: But this is then looking at the function. That's the
Speaker 5: main thing. The task that you did. We could have
Speaker 5: you do other tasks that test your empathy before you
Speaker 5: go in there for a PET scan or while you're
Speaker 5: doing it for fMRI. You can be looking at a
Speaker 5: mix of images of things that in normal people provoke
Speaker 5: emotional empathy versus cognitive empathy. You could go through different
Speaker 5: kinds of scans that probe different circuits in your brain.
Speaker 5: Then we can compare it to normal people and full
Speaker 5: blown psychopaths. And really to fully do it, you have
Speaker 5: to do all these different scans. That's why it's hard
Speaker 5: for people, the average person to do it because it
Speaker 5: becomes expensive and you got to get into a pipeline
Speaker 5: and research hospital pipeline.
Speaker 7: But at any rate, you had it done.
Speaker 5: And so you had the basic PET scan and you
Speaker 5: didn't have a task, that is, you didn't have to
Speaker 5: look at scary pictures and discussing things.
Speaker 7: You were just told to.
Speaker 4: What close my eyes And for about twenty minutes, I
Speaker 4: just kept my eyes closed and I was relaxed. I
Speaker 4: didn't see anything, and I try to keep my mind
Speaker 4: centered and not distracted.
Speaker 5: Okay, so this is kind of the non task task,
Speaker 5: and now it's called the default mode network. We're looking
Speaker 5: for and it's a circuitry that we should see these
Speaker 5: areas of the brain and a normal person light up,
Speaker 5: and these are connected areas that most people's lives are
Speaker 5: in this mode because you're kind of daydreaming or you relax.
Speaker 7: You know there's no task there, and so a lot
Speaker 7: of your life is in this mode.
Speaker 5: And if you look at the connectivity of this circuit
Speaker 5: of this plus with your limbics system, your emotional parts
Speaker 5: of your brain, you can really get an idea on
Speaker 5: why somebody is a certain way. You're simply given this
Speaker 5: task and it sounds like the way you've described it
Speaker 5: is exactly correct. And here's the raw scans. Part of
Speaker 5: the raw scans are up here without any processing. So
Speaker 5: this is ground truth, okay. And here is your pet scan. Again,
Speaker 5: it's not doctored with colors or anything, okay, because usually
Speaker 5: you see a pet scan, it's like there's blues and
Speaker 5: red scale and that's made in software and it's kind
Speaker 5: of fudged a bit. It doesn't mean it's wrong, but
Speaker 5: it's fudged. This is like ground pure truth, okay. And
Speaker 5: so wherever we see the dark areas you see right here,
Speaker 5: they're dark. That's what has really turned on in that
Speaker 5: half hour before you've got the pet scan. And so
Speaker 5: here you are and here's the normal okay, And I
Speaker 5: tried to this morning try to match them up if
Speaker 5: I could, and it.
Speaker 7: Turns out yours is completely normal.
Speaker 5: So this first test that this is like your your
Speaker 5: clinical scan is completely normal. So you don't have any
Speaker 5: problem in your brain that anybody can see. And anatomically
Speaker 5: it's not like tumors or anything like that, and there's
Speaker 5: no no weirdness at all. It's completely normal. And now
Speaker 5: when we looked at this, they really match up.
Speaker 7: You look like a completely normal for this test. So
Speaker 7: that's amazing, it's amazing normal.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it could be disappointed too, So I mean, again,
Speaker 5: this is not diagnostic, but you have quite a normal reaction.
Speaker 5: And you see how sort of hot you are down here.
Speaker 5: I cannot turn this part of my brain on at all.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: So when I do default mode, I can't turn that on.
Speaker 5: And so that's a psychopathic pattern.
Speaker 7: It's normal.
Speaker 2: And so after years of wondering if her father's genes
Speaker 2: had somehow infected her with the same traits, the same
Speaker 2: buried evil tendencies, Melissa could finally breathe a sigh of relief,
Speaker 2: knowing that she was another step in the opposite direction
Speaker 2: of Keith.
Speaker 4: The power that he had over me. Now I feel
Speaker 4: like he doesn't have any power over me anymore. I
Speaker 4: feel like I'm my own person. I feel liberated. I
Speaker 4: almost feel like I got out of jail. I feel
Speaker 4: so much better. I almost wish I would have.
Speaker 10: Done this a long time ago, that I would not
Speaker 10: have been running away, but I would have never been
Speaker 10: ready for it. I don't think like I am now.
Speaker 4: But I feel amazing. I feel like I'm my own
Speaker 4: person and free now. I'm excited about moving forward in
Speaker 4: the future. Like this is less energy devoted to worry.
Speaker 4: The energy that I've been using scared of my connection
Speaker 4: with my dad can now be used for something useful
Speaker 4: and purposeful. And it gives me everything that I need
Speaker 4: to just look to the future and stead of to
Speaker 4: the past.
Speaker 9: If you lost me or not, do you know what
Speaker 9: I an a bag?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 9: Do you know what I see?
Speaker 5: You?
Speaker 9: And I know what I do that you don't know me?
Speaker 9: You could have that too, but you would rather be free,
Speaker 9: big free.
Speaker 2: In the final Happy Face, Melissa comes to a reckoning
Speaker 2: with her past, her present, and her future.
Speaker 1: Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works. Executive
Speaker 1: producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, mangesh Ha Tikedur
Speaker 1: and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by
Speaker 1: Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
Speaker 1: Story editor is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays
Speaker 1: and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chicoigne. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian Newspaper, and
Speaker 1: the Carlisle family.