Even if you are not a football fan, you’ve all seen the diagrams of plays with all those X’s and O’s.  It makes you think, and even sometimes makes the players and coaches think, that they have it all figured out.  If you just follow the pattern, you will have success and that it will be a winning play.

Problem is, it’s not true. There are dozens of factors that enter into the equation.  The weather, the turf, memory, mental ability, the agility to pull it off and of course the plans and mindset of the opposing team.

In many ways the same is true for the human brain and human behavior.  We might have brain patterns, genetics and chemistry that tells us that we should or will develop a certain way.  The problem is there is also environment, parents, and many other factors that make us who we are.

That's the backdrop for neuroscientist Dr. James Fallon’s look at psychopathology in his book The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain

My conversation with James Fallon: