among the honors students and earned A's at the University of California at Riverside. But he wasn't very outgoing. The social highlight of his week was watching the television show "Lost" with his roommates.

He didn't get into the top graduate schools he applied to, and returned home, where he stayed up late, slept during the day and seemed rudderless until his mother insisted he get a job. He went to work at a pill factory, where co-workers noticed his tendency to stare off into space with an odd, faraway expression.

A second round of grad school applications won him acceptance at the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, a suburb of Denver. But instead of sailing through his courses with straight A's, Holmes struggled for the firsttime.

In 2012, he finally came undone, according to the defense. He was dumped by the first girlfriend he'd ever had, and he dropped out of grad school. He was losing the battle with what he called his "broken brain."

The prosecution portrays these setbacks as possible reasons for Holmes to lash out with violence. But the defense says they were merely triggers for psychosis.

He'd come to the conclusion that his broken brain couldn't fix itself, no matter how much neuroscience he studied. He couldn't handle the social interactions required for lab work and presentations.

His attention shifted to planning and carrying out a "mission" to increase his self-worth so he wouldn't have to take his own life, the defense asserts.

In a notebook that he mailed to a psychiatrist, he described