 Meet Joe, Joe's 32 years old and a murderer. 13 years ago, I met Joe on the lifewing at Wormwood Scrubs High Security Prison. I'd like you to imagine this place. It looks and feels like it sounds. Wormwood Scrubs. It is where England's most dangerous inmates are kept. These people committed acts of unspeakable evil. And I was there to study their brains. Now, growing up, I used to think of morality as something that I'd learned from my parents, from school, perhaps even from religion. But after my year on the lifewing, and after spending the subsequent decades studying morality in the brain, I've come to a rather different view that I'd like to share with you. Instead of the elusive concept of evil, consider empathy, that immensely powerful ability we all have to understand each other, for me to enter into your inner world and feel what you feel. What if what we call evil is in fact an absence of empathy? And what if that could be studied at the level of the brain? So we tested our population of inmates on their ability to make moral judgments. And we tested their ability to recognize moral emotions. And what we found was truly astonishing. They were able to make moral judgments, but they failed to understand the emotions required for empathy. They weren't really willfully evil. It was more like they had a blind spot for morality. Our population of inmates had a deficit in a circuit of brain structures, which included the amygdala, an almond-shaped organ deep within the brains of all social animals. But what was most astonishing was that this brain region was capable of adaptability and change. It could generate what's called neurogenesis, new generation of neurons, way into adulthood. What that means is that rather than being something purely learned, morality is something that resides deep within us, part of our shared humanity. And when it falters, it can have devastating consequences, but it can also be overcome and compensated for, like we all overcome the visual blind spot that we have. That requires specific training and practice. One way forward may be through restorative justice programs that train young offenders in the skills required for empathy. Such programs target the amygdala and may be more effective than the old practice of isolation and incarceration. We need a revolution in our understanding of the causes of crime. We need a new science of empathy. Thank you. Thank you.