Dysfunction in a gene called MAOA, the so-called "warrior gene," can help express psychopathic behaviour.The version of the gene that a person carries may determine or at least significantly influence whether a traumatic childhood experience of violence leads to psychopathy. Wikipedia
The gene inhibits serotonin reception in the impulse-control region of the brain.
Combined with exposure to abuse or trauma, studies show that the defect makes people highly susceptible to violent crime.
Because the MAOA gene gets passed down only on the X sex chromosome of mothers, more men than women are psychopaths.
For a man, only one X chromosome is inherited - the one from his mother, so, lacking an alternative, it gets expressed. A woman on the other hand gets an X from each parent, so that the normal MAOA gene usually inherited from her father can overrule a warrior one from her mother.
Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) is an enzyme which in humans is encoded by the MAOA gene. It is an isozyme of monoamine oxidase.
A neuroscientist named Jim Fallon of UC Irvine was one of the central figures involved in finding the correlation between the warrior gene and psychopathy. Psychopaths have fascinated Fallon for the past two decades, and perhaps, without knowing it, this was why: Fallon recently learned that no less than seven killers, including the famous Lizzie Borden, decorate his family tree. He subsequently analyzed the DNA and scanned the brains of every living member of his family. All their brain scans were normal (the orbital cortex of psychopaths shows little to no activity), and they all had normal MAOA genes - except one person. Fallon himself has all the trappings of a psychopath. In an interview for npr.org, he said, "I have the pattern, the risky pattern. In a sense, I'm a born killer."
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