Last week I started watching the series, a criminal thriller that tells us the Machiavellian plan of the psychopath and serial killer Joe Carroll, who uses his charming and manipulative personality to form a group of people willing to murder and do anything, even give your life, for him. This serial killer straight out of fiction made me wonder if science has an answer about the neurobiological aspects of psychopaths. And I came across a new study published that addresses this question and offers us a clue about the neuronal processes and activations of people diagnosed with this complex personality disorder.
Psychopathy affects approximately 1% of the general population of the United States and represents 20 to 30% of men and women in the prison population. When compared to the control group, psychopaths were found to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of repetitive crimes and violence against society.
To conduct the research, the team of researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate the brain activity of 80 male prisoners who were between 18 and 50 years old, while they responded to a series of scenarios where people were intentionally hurt. Some of these prisoners met the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy on the Hare Psychopathy Questionnaire, while the rest participated in the control group.
A marked lack of empathy is the main characteristic of individuals with psychopathy
What was the results? It was found that psychopaths have a deficiency in their “neural wiring” that allows us to worry about other people.
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Participants in the high psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial area of the prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and periaqueductal gray matter of the brain, but more activity in the striatum and insula, compared to participants in the high psychopathy group. control group, according to the study.
The high response of the insula in psychopaths was an unexpected finding, since it is a region that is critically involved in emotion and sympathetic resonance. In contrast, the decreased response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala is a finding consistent with the neuroscientific literature. This latter region is important for monitoring ongoing behavior, estimating consequences, and incorporating emotional learning into moral decision making, and plays a critical role in empathic concern and valuing the well-being of others.
co-director of the research and renowned researcher for his contributions on the neurobiological bases of empathy explained:
“This is the first time that the neural connections associated with empathic processing have been directly examined in subjects with psychopathy, especially in response to the perception of other people feeling pain or distress.”
Researchers believe that the neural response to the distress of others, such as pain, produces an aversive response in the observer that can act as a trigger to inhibit the motivation to seek prompt help.
The results of this novel research may have a direct implication in clinical psychology, since they could help improve evaluation and, therefore, treatment instruments.
Fountain: