Linda7NJ
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I'm not sure I have heard this before, and I would be VERY interested to know more about it. I know limbic structures are damaged, or rather *get damaged* (i.e. in abused/traumatized/neglected people, who qualify for mental illnesses). A look-see via MRI often shows various shrunken and/or asymmetric structures. If a child lives in an emotional earthquake zone (unpredictable raging parent, e.g.), many researchers believe that the frequent, prolonged rise in cortisol literally fries the normal circuitry of the hippo. When this happens, cortisol gets "stuck" in the on or off position for life. If stuck in the on position, these people are hypersensative to stress, which often results in issues such as depression, bulimia, emotion dysregulation, impulsivity (addictions/offenses). If stuck in the off position, these people have no fear (no startle response, i.e. psychopath).
So, surely I'm thinking it was the hippo. And, also, the hypothalamus, while part of the limbic system, is our brains' "Dorm mother," constantly monitor all systems to make sure they're in balance (temperature, BP, etc). The hippo is important for memory-making. It and the amygdala "check" with each other to "know" what we should do about a stimuli being presented (e.g. when we come upon a rattlesnake or a puppy).
In the video recently posted on a couple of killers, it should be noted that Mitten was a child of divorce, Krueger a foster child. These circumstances are "trauma" to a child, and early childhood traumas are more typical than atypical in the mentally ill/addicts/offenders. In fact, the more traumas in childhood, the more likely you are to have severe issues. For example, if a child grows up in a situation with a single mom who was an alcoholic and the child regularly received physical and emotional abuse coupled with neglect, that child has a 4,600% higher risk of becoming an I.V. drug user than someone raised in an intact family who was loved-up (see the ACE study).
Of course, without looking into Mitten, it appeared from the video that he developed schizophrenia. Many who develop schizophrenia do so around the time of the second brain pruning (very late adolescence), so there is some evidence that this process going awry results in "sudden" schizophrenia.
Thank you for your post!
I was with ya all the way up to the "he developed schizophrenia" part. I don't agree with that.