Music and the brain- Psychopaths and Sociopaths

The podcast discusses the effects of music on the brain and explores the music preferences of psychopaths and sociopaths. It explains how the brain reacts to music and how it activates the emotion, memory, and motor systems. The podcast then delves into the differences and similarities between psychopaths and sociopaths, using Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy as examples. It highlights their upbringing, behaviors, and music preferences. The podcast also mentions the potential of music therapy in treating psychopaths and sociopaths, as it can evoke emotions and aid in their integration into society. However, it emphasizes that music cannot be used as a diagnostic tool for identifying these disorders. The podcast concludes with a call for further research on music therapy and its application in treating psychopaths and sociopaths. Hello everyone listening to this attempt of a podcast. My name is Rachel Darling. This is for a class called Music in the Brain, a psychology course. So music, everyone loves music or at least a kind of music. For me personally, it's everything except the country. So first I'm going to explain what happens to your brain when you listen to music so you can have kind of like background information first. So the parts of your brain involved in emotion are not only activated during emotional music, they are also synchronized. Music also activates a variety of memory regions and the motor system. It has been theorized by the connective and musical beat that it is the activation of the brain's motor system that allows us to pick out the beat of music even before we start tapping our foot to it. So now that we kind of know how the brain works with music, it's time to move on to the psychological part of this. So the whole reason I did this podcast was to research the music's effect on psychopaths and if they tend to listen to similar music or not. However, I'm going to be using both psychopaths and sociopaths just because there isn't a whole lot of information on psychopaths and sociopaths, but there's enough to be able to kind of get an idea of what I could talk about. So psychopaths and sociopaths are different but very similar. Psychopaths, they lack empathy, hurt or manipulate others, have a lack of guilt, tend to be narcissistic, impulsive, unemotional, antisocial, they're perpetual liars, they have this God complex and they think that they are God, and they're superficially charming, meaning they tend to look attractive or at least know how to appear attractive to people. And sociopaths, they're also impulsive, they're callous, they have a weak conscious, which means that they can't really recognize what is right and wrong and harmful to people. They're arrogant, manipulative, they have no respect for others' interests, emotions, and feelings, they constantly lie as well, and they can't feel guilt. So Jeffrey Dahmer was a sociopath and Ted Bundy was labeled more as a psychopath. Psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made, but both usually are narcissistic and or have a personality disorder. So the two that I'm going to be talking about is Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. So Jeffrey Dahmer, he murdered 17 men and did a bunch of other horrific things to these men as well, but he confessed to his crimes in great detail, as if he was almost impressed of what he did or he was very proud of it. He, growing up, was shy, had no interest in school, was isolated, and lacked a parental figure, which means that he was neglected by both his mother and his father. His mother, however, did suffer from psychological problems that probably caused a bunch of damage to Jeffrey Dahmer growing up, just mentally, and the reason of that is because he thought that he was the primary cause of his family problems. So he thought that he was the reason why his mom was the way that she was and blamed himself for it. He also lacked social skills, had an alcohol abuse when he was in high school and college when he was committing his murders, and interestingly enough, he actually listened to whale sounds in prison. It was said that he used those to relax and that when he wasn't in prison beforehand, he was into really heavy metal and Black Sabbath, the Bloodusters and Slayers, especially when he was killing, he would listen to these kind of hardcore rock and roll bands. So Ted Bundy, on the other hand, he confessed to 36 of his kills, but according to online documents, there could have been as many as 100 people that he killed. So Bundy grew up with his grandma and grandpa and his grandmother had mental illnesses as well as his grandfather. He would violently beat his animals and children. Bundy was materialistic growing up, however, and provoked his stepfather that would cause him to get hit. So he would be doing these things on purpose because he knows what the reaction is going to be. And as a kid, he was socially awkward, but as an adult, he learned to become a charmer. He had a speech impediment growing up that caused him to get bullied a lot. And that probably also caused him to rebel and he started breaking the law at a very young age. He was also getting into hardcore pornography as a young teenager. But he did listen to 1900s Funkin' Soul, R&B, pop, hard rock, and soft rock. However, he would normally just listen to talk shows and call-in programs so that way he could learn how people interacted with each other so he could learn how to manipulate people. Is there a comparison of the music type? Although to Bundy, he preferred talk shows, he still listened to some kind of music. And it was some heavy metal, Black Sabbath, hardcore kind of things. But I feel like the main reason why he would listen to talk shows is because he could learn how to communicate with other people versus he didn't really have emotions to be able to feel and relate to music. This kind of leads on to my next topic of music therapy. So music provides and provokes a response which is universal, integrated into our evolutionary development, and leads to marked changes in emotions and movement. However, a number of studies have shown that rhythmic entrainment of motor function can actively facilitate the recovery of movement in patients with stroke, Parkinson's disease, cerebral palsy, and traumatic brain injury. Further, the potential applications of music therapy in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorder, able and intuitive, have led to psychotherapeutic uses aimed at directly evoking emotions. I think that music therapy could be used as a way to evoke emotions within psychopaths and sociopaths and maybe give us a new look into the research that we have done into possibly finding not necessarily a cure, but a better way to acclimate them into society's norms for them to be able to live full normal lives. Although hardcore, intense, rebellious music has been kind of linked with, you know, problems with people or teens and rebellion, I don't think that it can be used as a way to diagnose a sociopath or psychopath. They might like to listen to that kind of music, but it doesn't mean that a teenager who is listening to Nirvana is a psychopath and has killed seven people. All in all, we can't use music as a diagnosis standpoint, but we could use it as a treatment or a therapy technique to evoke emotions in either disorder. I think that would be beneficial for more information and studies to be done of music therapy and possibly targeting sociopaths and psychopaths to be able to see the full experience with the two. I would be very excited to see that research further on in new information. So this was my podcast about music's effects on psychopaths and if they tend to listen to similar music. And although they do tend to listen to similar music, it's not used as a diagnosis standpoint. Thank you everyone for listening. I really enjoyed doing this topic because I find psychopaths and sociopaths interesting just because of how their brain works and is wired. I would enjoy being able to do all of the different topics of this podcast. Thank you.