"I remember, some years ago, I met this man at a science conference." "He wrote for The Wall Street Journal." "He was talented." "There was a strong mutual attraction." "A few weeks went by, and we met in London over a weekend." "We walked the city, hung out at small cafes and galleries   and we had this wonderful intellectual banter going." "He'd mention his favourite novel or some work of art   and I would challenge everything with a subtle sarcasm." "I was enjoying myself and began to imagine us together in the future." "On our last night, I asked him when he wanted to visit me in Copenhagen." "There was silence." "This wonderful man just looked at his feet and said   that actually, he didn't wanna see me again." "Ever." "I was just too angry a person." "Too aggressive." "I was shocked." "The whole time I'd felt I was at my most charming." "When really, I'd just been unbearable." "GENETIC ME" "I often feel I'm on a collision course with the world around me." "I think:" "If only I weren't me but someone else." "It's as if I have my personality against me." "I'd like to change it." "My name is Lone Frank." "I'm an author and journalist   and I have a Ph.D. in neurobiology." "I don't believe in a soul." "Or rather, I believe that what we call a soul is pure biology." "The starting point is our genome." "It plays a decisive role   in how we function and what goes on in our brains." "We human beings are complex biological machines   and I'd like to tamper with the machinery." "To find a way to change through knowledge about my inner being." "I've decided to take a journey." "I'll visit some of the world's leading geneticists to get an understanding   of my own genetic inheritance." "But first I need an overview of who I am." "What my personality looks like." "I'll use the leading scientific tool:" "The five-factor model." "It's a test that measures aspects and dimensions of a personality." "I answer 200 questions about myself on the internet   and then meet with a psychologist who gives me the lay of the land." "The personality can be described by way of five domains." "We all have these five domains." "The first we call Emotional Reactions." "It measures negative emotions." "How big their impact is." "Your score is high." "How do you feel about that?" "That is something I was already aware of." "If I notice anything about myself, that would be it." "A focus on negative things." "The next dimension is Extroversion, and here your score is low." "Those who are at the high end of the scale like to be around people." "I honestly feel people drain me of energy." " So it corresponds to ..." " Yes, I don't like people much." "Right." "And certainly not, if they get too close." "The next dimension is Agreeableness." "Your score is very low." "It could hardly be any lower." "It's about how you meet people." "People with a high score approach other people   and those with a low score deflect." "And you've already expressed that this is familiar to you." "Yes, but I didn't necessarily think I would be at the very bottom." "I doubt people perceive you as decidedly unfriendly." "I think some people might feel:" "Oh, she's not a warm person." "How is it for you seeing it laid out like this?" "Looking at it from the outside." "Well, when I see it like this it doesn't look   very pleasant." "It reflects negative expectations of life and of the world as a whole." "And a negative ..." "A critical approach to things." "And I suppose that is why I get this feeling of carrying a burden:" ""Argh, the world is out of joint."" " "Living is hard."" " It is?" "Yes, I sometimes feel like that." "That it's like swimming in syrup." "It's just hard." "My father was an alcoholic." "My mother was depressed." "I grew up with stories about great- grandfathers and distant uncles   who killed themselves, and I've struggled with the darkness myself." "But how much of this is genetic?" "How much of who I am today was already there from the beginning?" "Are our lives for the most part predetermined from birth   because of the way we're put together?" "How much can we determine and change for ourselves?" "How are we to understand this thing inheritance?" "Our DNA is a little alphabet with only four letters." "A, T, G and C." "You could say that human beings are created from information." "A string of letters." "They form sentences." "These sentences are our genes." "I think of them as sentences in a book." "A sort of inner blueprint." "This book describes our possibilities." "I've read whole chapters in my book." "We're in a genetic revolution   and genetic tests can be accessed by anyone." "I've sent a saliva test to Iceland to a lab that mapped out   the most important of the 25,000 genes that are found in all my cells." "These days, anyone can delve into their own genetic material." "The sentences in your genetic book will reveal secrets about   why you look the way you do, what diseases you're likely to develop." "But will they also provide hints about what goes on inside your head?" "Who you are as a person?" "Or who you can become?" "I see the world through fairly dark glasses, so it's appropriate in a way   that I'm here in gloomy Newcastle to meet an expert on personality." "Daniel Nettle is a professor of psychology." "He's interested in the mechanisms of personality." "And why we become who we are." "I have this five-factor model personality test." "Take a look at it." "What kind of person do you see there?" "Give me a second." "Hm ..." "I don't see a big people person, I have to say." "But I see a very creative person, potentially." "Which ... you know." "I see someone who loses sleep sometimes." "But who does a lot of very interesting things along the way." "But these things tell you what you already know because after all   it's based on what you say about yourself, so ..." "I think we all wonder:" "What is personality?" "It's a very fluffy thing." "Well ..." "There are some people ..." "You just know how they're gonna react." "Let's say you've got some friends." "You go up behind them   and make a loud noise." "They're gonna jump out of their skins." "And some of the others will say:" ""Why did you do that?"" "So it's like there's some basic difference in our nervous systems." "It determines how they'll react in a general way." "Are they easily scared, or is it difficult to scare them?" "This is consistent through life." "If as a kid you're easily scared   you're gonna turn into an adult who's easily scared, too." "I was interested in happiness, and I did a lot of research." "It turns out that the biggest predictor of how happy, say a 40-year-old is   is not how much they earn or how beautiful their wife is   or how successful they are." "It's how happy they were at 15." "That's amazing." "It's shocking." "A terrible finding." "But ... there are these continuities in people's lives." "Anxious children grow up to be anxious adults." "Smiling children turn out to be happy adults." "These things stay with us." "Many people, if you ask them, will have the notion   and it might be an illusion, that they can change their personality." "You can change your life." "There's a difference between   changing your personality and changing your life." "If people have problems with anxiety or sadness there's a lot you can do." "You'll still be a person who's prone to respond in an anxious way." "But you can really change the way it affects you." "You say we can change the way we live our lives   but we can't really change our personality." "It's pretty stable over our lifetime." "Would you say that you're a happier individual   after having studied personality and understanding these things?" "I've spent a lot of time agonizing why I'm not the kind of scientist   who stays with the same experiment again and again and gets it perfect." "Well, that's just not what I do." "There are other people who do that." "If you can accept that your strengths are not the same as someone else's ..." "Rather than beating yourself up you just say: "This is who I am."" "It's a really liberating thing." "We are who we are." "But that would seem, to a lot of people, quite crazy." "People keep saying that until they have their 2nd child." "Then they say:" ""I did nothing different, and this kid is as different from the first one   as a Martian is from someone who grew up on Earth." "They're totally different." "They respond in a different way." "If I behave differently towards them, it's because they're different."" "You've got to conclude that the shuffling of the genetic pack   is pretty powerful business." "It made me think back." "How was I when I was 15?" "I was no joke." "I was an awful teenager." "Really hard to get along with." "He said:" "You're obviously not a people person." "Which is true." "But still, I think I've changed an awful lot since I was 15." "Nettle says that I should just accept myself the way I am." "And forget about changing." "That sounds like old-fashioned fate." "I feel it can't be the whole story." "That I just have to accept the dark sides I'm struggling with." "I want a deeper understanding of what has shaped me." "It's strange, but when I think back on my childhood   it's never the early years I remember." "Being a kindergartener, loved by parents and grandparents." "Playing with kids in the neighbourhood." "That whole warm and safe middle-class existence." "No, for me childhood crystalized around the disaster that came later." "A time that I have no pictures of   because no one had the desire to capture it." "My father was drinking heavily." "And when I was 12 my parents went through a nasty divorce." "The family was split up." "Not long after, my mother was diagnosed with cancer." "While I was in high school, she died." "That's what I think of as my childhood." "That's what I feel must have shaped me." "In London, I'm going to visit psychologist Robert Plomin   who's used identical twins - to investigate   whether family environment influences our personality growing up." "Can we say how much our parents and the way they bring us up   matter to our personality as adults?" "It's reasonable to think that nurture's important." "Kids grow up with their parents who have a lot of influence over them." "There's one thing I noticed with my father." "He's always been quick-tempered You can say hot-blooded." "Normally, a sane person, but when he allows himself to get angry   he goes ballistic." "And I do see that tendency in myself." "So it's reasonable to think I'm modelling his way, bad way   of dealing with these difficult situations." "All of psychology assumes   that nurture is basically the reason why things run in families." "Like me and my father's proneness to being angry." "Or mental illness or cognitive abilities or personalities." "But when we started doing the genetic studies   we found a lot of influence of genetics." "In the 70's John Loehlin, whose book I have here ..." "This dog-eared book because it's out of print ..." "This book is called:" "'Heredity, Environment and Personality." "A study of 850 pairs of twins.'" "It was the first time someone put these things together." "To say the genetics is so strong   that it actually accounts for the familial resemblance." "Things run in families for reasons of nature and nurture." "But it looks like nature is accounting for the familial resemblance." "He was the first one to say:" ""As weird as this sounds   what must be important are environmental influences   specific to the individual   and not shared by children growing up in the same family." "When I was 7 1/2, my brother was born." "We share half our genes, and on the outside we seem a lot alike." "But on the inside we couldn't be more different." "Our parents and everyone else always told us how different we were." "I remember myself as a shy, withdrawn and sulky kid." "Well, I smile in the snapshots, but we all do." "My brother, on the other hand, was an exuberant baby." "One of those kids who always gets people's attention." "This is very counterintuitive." "The old Freudian story is that our parents basically shape us." "What is the most convincing evidence that they don't have that influence?" "Identical twins reared apart   are very powerful for getting at genetic influence." "Genetically identical people reared in uncorrelated environments." "The converse of that on the environmental side   is adopted children, who are adopted into the same home." "Two genetically unrelated children growing up in the same family." "To the extent that growing up in the same family makes you similar   they ought to be similar." "But adopted siblings are correlated zero." "They're not at all similar." "It doesn't mean family doesn't matter, it just means that in personality ..." "The personality of your parents doesn't affect   the personality that you become environmentally." "That relationship is genetic." "But your parents have a lot to do in terms of how happy you are   the resources you get to develop your genetic propensities." "I think it's incredibly interesting to think about that   the only environment that doesn't seem to affect your personality   your basic psychology, is the environment you think did everything." "The environment at home." "Your mother and father." "It's so counterintuitive." "Kind of impossible." "But, as he said, you look at kids, little kids   you can even look at foetuses and see   that they react differently and characteristically to stimuli." "So yeah, we do have a personality, and it's laid down very early." "If genes shape us more than our parents do, as Plomin says " " I need to know more about them." "I call for an appointment at Duke University in North Carolina." "There's an expert whose research is shifting the boundaries." "On my trip across the Atlantic I dive into the first studies   that showed how genes and environment work together." "We know of a handful of genes that work in the brain   and fundamentally influence our psyche and personality." "Two of these genes are called MAOA and SERT." "They're found in two different variants   that affect the chemistry of the brain differently." "A robust variant and a sensitive variant." "Psychologists Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi   were studying these variants ten years ago when they made   a major scientific breakthrough." "Caspi and Moffitt gene tested more than 1000 people and discovered   that the combination of gene variants and childhood environment   was crucial for their behaviour as adults." "A sensitive variant of the MAOA gene and a traumatic childhood   resulted in higher risk for aggression, even criminality." "A sensitive variant of the SERT gene and childhood trauma   resulted in a higher risk of depression." "So the message was:" "It's not genes alone   or childhood traumas alone that determine our development." "It's about how our personal cocktail of genes and environment is shaken." "My own little gene experiment has given me an unpleasant surprise." "It turns out that I only have risk variants." "No robustness at all." "It feels a little like losing in the great genetic lottery." "Should I see myself as a terrible train wreck?" "As someone who needs pampering and to be packed in cotton?" "I need to understand the connection between   what these genes do in my brain   and how it affects the way I experience the world." "Ahmad Hariri has studied how you get from pure genetic knowledge   to a sense of life as it's actually lived." "The simple theme of our research is to understand individual differences." "Meaning, why is it that when two people encounter the same thing   they respond to it very differently?" "And more specifically:" "What is it about our biology that makes us respond differently?" "That creates individual differences we all see in each other." "Two siblings can respond very differently to the death of a parent." "One can be resilient, plan the funeral   and help all the other family grieve and mourn   while the other unravels, falls apart." "Why is that?" "It's the same experience." "The death of a mom or a dad." "But a completely different almost polar-opposite response." "And this is of two individuals who are largely genetically related." "But not genetically identical." "Genetic differences can influence   the way that brains are processing this information and in turn   whether one is resilient to stress or susceptible to stress." "I remember when our mother died, I broke down completely." "And for a long time I couldn't function   but it seemed like my brother took it in stride." "I don't know whether it was because he was younger or more robust." "But even today he's one of those people   who can handle any form of stress." "Completely the opposite of me." "There's a structure in the brain called the amygdala." "It exists in every animal with a backbone   and really does the same thing in all of those animals   whether it's a lizard, a bird, a monkey or a man." "One of the core jobs of the amygdala is to process threat." "To let us know when something could harm us." "We need stress." "It's critical to the survival of every species." "Without stress we would've died off aeons ago." "Because nothing fazes us." "We just walk around blindly   and then boom." "The lion gets us." "You don't want that!" "But it has to be regulated." "You need to have a stress response   and once you've dealt with that stress   you need to be able to quieten it down, to inhibit that stress response." "And that's another region of the brain?" "Yes." "The amygdala doesn't care what happens afterwards." "I like to say it's like a watchdog." "When we're at home in our beds, and our dog starts to bark loudly   the amygdala is sensing something." ""There's something outside the house." "I don't like it." "It's different." "It's strange." "I am going to let my owner know that I am not happy."" "The owner in our brain is the prefrontal cortex." "It's the seat of our rather unique human abilities." "To create, to predict, to identify patterns in our world   and to, in this context, very carefully control our behaviour." " So it's an executive director?" " Exactly." ""The dog is barking, I'm up." "I'm gonna figure out what's wrong."" "I get to my dog, look out the window   and I notice it's just a group of kids passing by, being loud." "It's my job as the responsible party to tell my dog:" ""It's okay." "Let's go back to bed."" "If I don't do that, the dog is gonna continue barking   and continue barking and continue barking." "This is what we find to be the problem in the brain   when we have an anxiety disorder." "Even to a certain extent with depression." "When we think about   a depressed person, we think about someone closed off from the world." "Retreated to a more inward focus." "That's in many ways the consequence of having been over-reactive." "Having been bombarded by stimulation   and by an excessive amygdala response in the absence   of proper prefrontal control and then shutting down." "Talk about a big dog." "I can easily imagine my own amygdala   as a growling German shepherd snapping at my heels." "Stress is like a cloud always hanging over my head." "Everyone else can relax and enjoy life while I'm like a tightly wound coil." "So genes have a direct influence on how tense my personality is?" "Yes." "At one level we have genetics, that help us understand   how big and how loud that dog is." "There are also genes that influence   how capable the prefrontal cortex is of regulating the amygdala." "Are you a good owner, or are you a bad owner?" "One of those variants is in a gene called COMT." "COMT contributes to dopamine signalling." "And very uniquely in the prefrontal cortex." "There are two common versions." "We call one the VAL and the other the MET." "What that means is that when a person with a MET Allele background ..." " Let's say you're MET-MET ..." " I am." "So you have relatively more dopamine in your prefrontal cortex." "Which means, when you're asked to do something you're very focused." "You're able to lock into that and just get the job done." "The problem is in something we call perseveration." "Meaning that even though you've quietened the dog   and the people have passed by the house, everything is quiet and safe   when you go back to bed you're gonna constantly think about that." " Rumination." " You're gonna ruminate." "Think about: "Oh, man, the dog barked, it was so scary." "Next thing you know it's eight o'clock and you're still thinking about it." " That's like hearing about myself." " Yeah, so that's ..." "You can imagine that this is a very dangerous type of thinking." "Rumination and perseveration are core symptoms of depression." "I know we are biological machinery, but still it's a strange sensation   to be able to relate this abstract knowledge   to something that can be felt deep within the body." "The chemical mechanisms, Hariri is talking about, fit perfectly   with my own experience of the world." "How I see it." "How I feel it." "I'm very familiar with rumination." "It takes a chance remark to set it off." "To get me to wake up at four in the morning obsessively thinking:" "What did he mean by that?" "I'm the sort of person who worries about everything." "Am I doing okay at my job?" "Is it even the right job for me?" "Will I ever amount to anything?" "It corresponds to something they've discovered about the COMT gene." "Scientists speak of people like me who carry two copies of the MET variant   as worriers, as opposed to people with two copies of the VAL variant   whom they call warriors." "Warriors act and react." "While we worriers think." "We ruminate." "Knowing about these genetic facts, is there anything I can do about that?" "I have all these so-called risk alleles and I also have personality problems   with high neuroticism and very, very low agreeableness." "As surprised as people often are when they ask me:" "What do we do?" "..." "I think most people expect me to say:" "We're gonna develop a drug for that." "The reality is we have the tools behaviourally to retrain the brain." "We can apply behavioural strategies based on genetic background." "This is the idea that through systematic retraining   you can quieten down the watchdog." "That's one thing you can do." "The other is a more top-down approach   which is retraining the prefrontal cortex to be more flexible." "And that's a more conscious decision to focus on the good." "But as a short-short and a MET-MET, what would you do?" "I would probably do a combination." "What we're suggesting is   you need to ..." "You know what might work with this?" "Have a stiff drink at the end of the day." "I do have two glasses of red wine every day." "I do it for my heart ..." "But now I can say I do it for my prefrontal cortex." "You want ..." "This is gonna sound a little strange   but someone like you needs to check out." "It's just to stop thinking." "One of the best ways to reduce the efficiency of the prefrontal cortex   is through alcohol." "Do your attentional modification and have two glasses of wine every day." "And you should be fine." "My meeting with Hariri is the high point of the journey so far." "He tells me that there is something I can do." "When we know about our genes, it says something about our brains." "And the brain we can shape." "It's plastic." "It can be changed." "So maybe there are possibilities   even for someone with my sensitive equipment." "What if you've taken a really hard hit, biologically speaking?" "What sort of person do you get   with the worst possible combination of genes and brain activity?" "From North Caroline, I've driven to Albany, New York   to meet a man who's spent years looking a brain scans of criminals." "We're not talking pickpockets   but people who've committed the most horrific crimes." "James Fallon studies the inner workings of mass murderers." "What I noticed, after going through about 20 of these is   that they may have had damaged different parts of the brain   but they all had an underlying pattern of very low activity   in the base of their frontal lobe and in the amygdala, the temporal lobes." "The areas of the brain that control pleasure and violence etc.   the id, the amygdala, was down." "But also, the area that has to do with control of behaviour   inhibiting behaviour, but also codes for ethics and morality." "That was also turned off." "These people that I was looking for ..." "The area of the brain that says:" "I think this might be wrong, was turned off." "I was sitting in my office, and I had this pile of scans." "A lot of murderers." "Some impulsive murderers   some psychopathic murderers, and some were normal." "And I got a knock at the door." "In comes Dave, our main technician." ""I've got your family scans." I said: "Just put them here."" "Couldn't do a full analysis, I just went through ..." "I've done this long enough to quickly see if there's something wrong." "I said: "That's very normal." I went to the second one, the third one." "Looked at it." "It looked very good." "I got to the bottom of the pile and the last one jumped right out at me." "I said: "That's a psychopathic murderer." Or at least a psychopath." "You can't tell by a scan, if somebody's a murderer." "But they have traits." "I said: "This must be in the wrong pile."" "It looked like all these other scans of the murderers in the other pile." "So I called Dave: "You've gotta help me." "You've misplaced the pile."" "So I had him check." "He came back:" ""No, it's one of your family members."" "I said: "Okay, we've gotta find out who this is." We pealed off the code." "And there was James H. Fallon." "It was me!" "I immediately started laughing." "It threw me for a loop, but it didn't bother me." "I knew that I hadn't killed anybody or done anything really bad." "I was just a regular little bad boy, but that's it." "But didn't it make you question why, with the same brain pattern   as all these murderers, am I not a murderer, but a fairly good guy?" "Yeah, it set up several years of a hunt." "Fallon and I are chasing the same thing." "A molecular understanding of ourselves." "Not only do we have a common fascination." "He's incredibly good company." "He's fun." "He embraces everyone around him." "Even a snail like me is drawn out of my shell." "I'm invited to a barbecue with Fallon's three brothers in Saratoga Springs." "I'm sitting here surrounded by a family with warm relations." "I'm reminded that I almost have none." "I think about how strange this biological connection is." "The brothers are very different, but also have deep features in common." "Their great energy, extrovertedness and a need to feel life." "We have barbecues." "Family parties." "My mother loves these, because she always had parties here at this house." "I could tell by the twinkle in her eye, that she had something." ""Have you seen this book about your father's family?"" "It was called 'Killed Strangely", and it's the story about the Cornell family." "My grandfather was Harry Cornell Fallon." "My cousin ... his name is Cornell." "We're Cornells on this whole side." "I went in and skimmed through it." "In that, the first case of matricide   the killing of a mother by a son, is my great-grandfather." "It goes all the way back to 1675." "At the end of the book   there's a string of other murderers all in that same line." "Murderers above and beyond the cultural norm at the time." "So, we've got all these murderers ..." "It's now four lines of our family on that side." "I started to look at some genetic combinations that would do that." "What would turn off these areas?" "Looking at it, one was a certain group of serotonin receptors." "They turn on and off these areas." "I knew from Brunner's study in 1992   where there was all these men in a family ..." "They had this gene that coded for MAOA." "They were all criminals." "So that's why MAOA was originally called the aggression gene." "Caspi, in 2002, saw that it wasn't just the gene   but how it interacts with early abuse." "Significant abuse." "Putting those together was like:" "Okay, there's a set of genes   that turns off those areas during development." "If you have those genes, it changes the size of those areas, the amygdala." "Especially in boys." "Fallon is convinced that the safety of his childhood home   kept him from going over to the dark side." "In a way it makes sense." "Genes and environment are forever locked in a special dance." "Think of our genetic book." "It has to do with how it's interpreted." "Some sentences will be read." "Others skipped." "Only some genes are active." "So, the way you live your life   becomes crucial for which genes are turned on and off in your cells." "My sense of empathy is equal to everybody." "So I don't have a different empathy for people close to me." "But if I see a child in pain, that upsets me." "But I don't get any more upset with somebody close to me." "I live on an emotional flatland." "But it's a high enough flatland   that I feel conscious that I have to do good things, good work." "And I'll do things for people, but for strangers as much as for my sister." "So my genes have produced kind of a frontal lobotomy in one spot." "The upper part of my brain, the thinking part, works better then." "It's not bothered by the functioning of this orbital cortex." "It puts me at a great advantage." "I can still do high-functioning things   and I'm not slowed down by tragedy." "Fallon has been diagnosed as a prosocial psychopath." "A friendly psychopath." "And he's fine with that." "It seems as if he's accepted his biology   both the advantages and the disadvantages." "I think about whether I can reach some sort of acceptance." "Become reconciled to the baggage I'm schlepping around." "It's funny." "Sitting here, I feel almost like talking to my father." "He died a few years ago." "He had ..." "People would say he had psychopathic traits." "I would say he was the person I loved most in the world." "He was great." "He brought me up." "He was my base in life." "He thought I was the greatest." "But he also had that ..." "Yeah, things didn't bother him." "And he was really sort of ..." "He thought it was so bad for me:" ""Why are you bothered by all these things?" "They don't matter."" "But it's something you can't turn off." "And I'm like ... there must be a way to turn this stuff off." "So I set out on this genetic journey to learn information to help me change." "If you were me, what would you do with this information?" "Think of ... you're sitting here." "You got here partially because of that pain." " Yeah." " Probably." "It's what drives you." "It makes you do what you do." "Look at artists." "There are so many creative people with depression." "Usually bipolar." "They go down into that   terrible groundwater nobody wants to go to." "They don't produce anything, but when they come back up ..." "They come up with this wonderful thing." "And to me it's a gift." "Fallon says I have to think about my life in a different way." "What I think of as a weakness can also be a strength." "But that's easy for him to say." "The man is a friendly psychopath." "He hasn't been dealt a sensitive fragile hand in the genetic game." "I experience all my risk factors as an obstacle to overcome." "I've heard of a scientist with a new way of looking at genetic sensitivity." "His name is Jay Belsky." "He's an American psychologist." "I find out he's going to a conference in Zurich." "On my way home I make one last stop." "I think one of the problems with the study of human development is   that we've been excessively influenced by the Enlightenment." "We've become romantic idealists who believe   that ... humans are perfectible organisms." "If we just loved them, cared for them   nurtured them, stimulated ..." "we'd have peace on Earth." "If you're an evolutionary biologist, you know that this is nonsense." "Evolutionary biology taught me:" "Don't romanticize development." "Understand that organisms have a primary goal in life   which is to reproduce and pass on their genes." "As a developmental psychologist you study families." "My interests are:" "How do experiences shape who we are?" "And the notion is that early experiences shape who we are." "Whether that's the first five seconds, first five months or first five years." "I came to realize:" "The future is inherently uncertain." "So why would nature craft an organism   whose tomorrow is dictated by how the winds are blowing today?" "If the winds changed   then they were all going over the waterfall." "It's a dead end." "And that said to me that theoretically what we should have   is variation in susceptibility to environmental influences." "My presumption was that that would be more or less inborn." "My close friends are professors Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt." "Before their now classic paper   on gene, environment and interaction came out I saw the figure." "That figure, that graph, showed that with a certain genotype   if you were maltreated, you were more likely to be antisocial." "What I noticed was that there's a part of this figure that shows   that those supposedly vulnerable people who carry a certain genotype   so that they'll be more aggressive if they're maltreated   that if they weren't maltreated, they were the least aggressive." "What became clear is that under bad conditions   just as those risk theories predicted   those kids with those genotypes look like they did badly." "But in the few studies that had measures of positive environment   or sometimes just the absence of a bad environment ..." "Not that your parents were really nice, you just weren't maltreated." "Those kids with those genes were doing much better than other kids." "Babies can have difficult temperaments." "They're hard to settle." "I had one of these." "I came away from it wondering why there wasn't more child abuse." " This was your own kid?" " This is my oldest son, Daniel." "I used to say about Daniel:" "It's a good thing we got him." " Why?" " Because we could cope with him." "It was easy to see how, if you were depressed or lacked resources   if you didn't have understanding, this kid would've ..." "You might have thrown him against the wall, called him names or hit him." "But what those parents, who have those kids, are never told is:" "This kid's gonna try your patience, but you've got a diamond in the rough." "This kid, you can really make an imprint on." "You can develop him, because he or she has great upside opportunity   as well as a downside risk." "And that can be a blessing and not, if you would, a curse." "We have another concept:" "Resilience." "You and I both grew up in divorced homes." "I become a basket case because I have risk characteristics." "My genes, physiology, whatever." "You ..." " I triumph." " No!" "It's water off a duck's back." "You're who you're gonna be no matter what." " Robustness." " Right." "So it looks like I'm vulnerable." "You're resilient." "You did not succumb." "Let's put us in another thought experiment where we're poor kids." "But the world changes, and we get moved into an environment   where things are flush and rich, and there's lots of opportunity." "All of a sudden the risky guy over here flourishes." "The resilient person over there stays who she was." "Resilience isn't an unmitigated good." "It's an unmitigated good when things go badly." "But when things go well, you may not be able to benefit." "That's nature's way of hedging its bets." "If things go badly, people like you do better than people like me." "But if things go well, people like me do better than people like you." "To me, that is such an interesting and positive way   of thinking about genetics because it is leaving the medical model   of diseased and well or normal and sick." "It's about biological variation, and there's good evolutional reason   for biological variation." "It tells us there is no perfect genome." "There is no perfect brain physiology." "It depends on what context you're in." "This brings me to myself." "I have had a genetic test." "And I was told that I have two copies of the risk allele for everything." "MAOA, serotonin transporterer, COMT, BDNF ..." "So you should be depressed, antisocial etc." "I might have turned out a lot worse   if I didn't grow up in a certain environment." "It gets me thinking about   what is it about my childhood that would've been positive?" "When I think about early childhood, there was a horrible divorce   between my parents who hated each other from I was ten years old." "And they couldn't speak ever again." "My mother died when I was 18, and my father was an alcoholic." "But then again, I had an extremely close relationship with my father." "I really loved him." "Nobody's life is perfectly wonderful." "Each one of us who've had a good life, they weren't perfect lives." "There were difficulties." "So in that sense one has to look at   a totality of exposures." "Every morning from when I was 3 to when I was 6 " " I sat on the back of the bike as my father took me to kindergarten." "It was a glorious 20 minutes." "We talked about anything and everything." "Sometimes we had a quick round of blind chess." "It was a time when the world opened up." "There is no perfect life and no perfect genetic material either." "Our genes are not just good or just bad." "We all fill a place in the evolutionary game." "And nature has use for all our variations." "My genetic journey has been like lifting the lid to my own machinery." "The information in genes is fixed, but it's only a starting point." "Environment and genes can never be seen as isolated from each other." "They're engaged in an eternal exchange." "It can be said that genes and environment meet in our brains." "The brain is plastic and malleable." "I've achieved an insight into the physical peculiarities of my brain   and I have a feeling I can learn to rein in my amygdala   and tone down my frontal cortex." "That I can regulate my propensity to ruminate by thinking differently." "Maybe personality cannot be changed radically   but it's all about seeing possibilities and not just limitations." "Understanding yourself in a different way can make all the difference." "What looked to me like a disastrous childhood, blemished personality   and a fragile genetic makeup, now stands in a different light." "I'll undoubtedly run into problems in the future." "Men who don't understand me." "Sleepless nights." "But I feel I know myself better now at a biological level." "And that makes me better equipped." "The genetic revolution has only just begun." "Scientists are merely scratching the surface." "But what today looks like impossibly complicated information   will soon become a completely natural part of our lives." "What will this mean for how we look at ourselves?" "What will it mean for being human?" "Subtitles:" "Tina Goldberg Dansk Video Tekst"