Via: Toothpastefordinner.com
We’ve now become aware that a psychopath in our orbit is likely homozygous for the ApoE4 allelic variant of apolipoprotein. ApoE-4* is the version of a brain lipoprotein that is correlated with late onset Alzheimer’s.
Recent studies point to ApoE4 allele correlation with white matter disconnects and personality changes well before any clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.
And so we said, “huh.”
Recall we’ve pondered if psychopathy was a form of dementia. We’ve wondered if our observation that the meanest grandmothers live the longest because their lifespan allows the downhill slide due to progressive brain fouling by these lipoproteins (as opposed to grandmothers who die before they have a chance to turn mean).
Our prediction: One form of psychopathy will have the biological markers of Alzheimer’s.
* Apolipoprotein epsilon (“ε”) 4 for those who appreciate using Greek symbol fonts.
A very interesting question and a great post. Add to the “puzzle” the following studies,
“Influence of Cognitive Status, Age, and APOE-4 Genetic Risk on Brain FDDNP Positron-Emission Tomography Imaging in Persons Without Dementia”(2009).
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=482927
“Olfactory discrimination predicts cognitive decline among community-dwelling older adults” (May 2012)
http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v2/n5/full/tp201243a.html
“Olfactory abilities and psychopathy: higher psychopathy scores are associated with poorer odor discrimination and odor identification” (September 2012).
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12078-012-9135-7
Related article, ‘Psychopaths’ have an impaired sense of smell
http://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/springer+select?SGWID=0-11001-6-1390146-0
While on the subject of psychopathy, the following study sheds even more light,
“Frontal information flow and connectivity in psychopathy” (Aug. 2012)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22918965
E-C, Thank you for taking the time to post the links, which are exactly where I was going on this.
There aren’t any papers on psychopathy and ApoE-4 (that I found), although it seems like something that should be pretty blatant — the impaired olfactory (our post) is a blazemark and it is found with ApoE4. (Note: ApoE4 is only a predeliction not an absolute correlation or cause of Alzheimer’s, don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily). I suppose it depends on how you want to define “dementia.” Also, one of the psychopaths in our orbit was unable to smell at all (rather than the impaired sense of smell discrimination). This person was very ill as a child and so we thought that white matter disconnect was due to heavy duty brain immune reaction during brain development (according to others who knew this person as a child and they were always the same way).
On the connectivity issue – sure seems that way to us (our white matter category).
To jump ahead, we proposed an anti-psychopath vaccine. (There’s some work on using ApoE-4 peptides having some linkers or something as immunogens, so who knows.)
Unfortunatlely missed your post on “The smell of a psychopath”. Will have to look into the relationship between Parkinson’s and ApoE-4 too. Have not found any papers on psychopathy and ApoE-4 either