Speculation

Trey Smith

I've put the Tao Bible series on hold for a few days simply because my heart's not into it. Whenever some horrific event occurs, I often feel like a Jedi knight in the Star Wars film who states he can feel a "disturbance in the force."

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When I first learned about the shooting tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, one of the tidbits of information about the alleged shooter is that he was involved in the study of neuroscience.

In vertebrates, the nervous system can be split into two parts, the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), and the peripheral nervous system. In many species — including all vertebrates — the nervous system is the most complex organ system in the body, with most of the complexity residing in the brain. The human brain alone contains around a hundred billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses; it consists of thousands of distinguishable substructures, connected to each other in synaptic networks whose intricacies have only begun to be unraveled. The majority of the approximately 80,000 genes belonging to the human genome are expressed specifically in the brain. Due to the plasticity of the human brain, the structure of its synapses and their resulting functions change throughout life. Thus the challenge of making sense of all this complexity is formidable.

In light of this murderous rampage, a thought crossed my mind. Maybe James Holmes was interested in neuroscience for personal reasons. Maybe he wanted to learn why his own brain was haywire.

As someone who must deal with the ramifications of Schizotypal Personality Disorder, I certainly can understand how a science-minded individual might be interested in trying to figure out what is wrong with his own brain! I spend a good deal of time trying to figure out what causes me to experience visual and auditory hallucinations. I would like nothing better than for these hallucinations to fade away, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me.

In theorizing what could have led this bright young man to commit unspeakable horrors, here's a bit of speculation.

James Holmes suffers from schizophrenia. As stated on Wikipedia, the "onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood." He decided to major in neuroscience because he wanted to understand what was going on in his own brain. As the disease worsened, maybe he got to the point in which he decided there was no help for him and surrendered to the hallucinations. That's why he abruptly decided to withdrawn from his doctoral program. He thought to himself, "What's the point?"

Since this is nothing more than speculation, it could be completely wrong. He might just be an evil dude who wanted to make a name for himself in an infamous way. Hopefully, we may learn some answers in the coming weeks and months.