On October 1, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded 546 more, firing multiple rifles from a hotel room in Las Vegas overlooking an outdoor concert. Then he killed himself. No one knows why he did it.
As part of the attempt to figure that out, The New York Times and others report, the Clark County Coroner’s office is sending Paddock’s brain to the Stanford University lab of Hannes Vogel, a neuropathologist. Vogel (who, at the request of Stanford’s communications office, is not speaking to the press) will perform both visual and microscopic examinations of Paddock’s brain, looking for abnormalities, tumors, degenerative illnesses, or anything else that might suggest why an otherwise unassuming video poker player would turn his extensive gun collection on innocent people.
Nobody thinks it’s going to work.
Sure, this is due diligence, part of a complete investigation. Vogel is a pathologist, so maybe he’ll find something pathological—maybe a tumor in the ventral medial or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, parts of the brain that have to do with impulse control and willpower. Damage there, or maybe to the inferior posterior ventral cortex can also make people more violent.
Under a microscope, stained with various dyes, a brain can reveal degenerative disorders that can contribute to depression or poor emotional control.
But people get tumors and degenerative diseases all the time. Most of them don’t become vicious killers. “If you have a mass murderer and you looked at his brain, it would completely amaze me if you could see anything relevant or useful,” says Christof Koch, chief scientist and president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. “The brain probably looks relatively normal.”
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