ABSTRACT
Edward Gibbon, in his book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wrote of a population whose citizens had become insensitive to their civil responsibilities, being more concerned about their livelihood than with contributing to their society. The evidence at hand confirms a familiar belief that whether a community lives in social equilibrium or social disruption depends on the way people treat each other as they cope with everyday challenges. Italian immigrants from Roseto Val Fortore and nearby towns arrived in Pennsylvania toward the end of the nineteenth century and settled on a hilltop, once a forest, that had been lumbered off to become an expanse of stumps and stones. New knowledge of the circuitry in the human brain may help explain in part how, in a genetically, ethnically, and socially homogeneous community, radical change can occur with such striking medical consequences.
