Health & Medicine
Scientists Uncover Neurological Basis for Lack of Empathy in Psychopaths' Brains
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Sep 26, 2013 10:04 AM EDT
Psychopaths often lack empathy and remorse. Until now, though, researchers have been unsure exactly what the neurological basis was for empathy dysfunction in psychopaths. Now, they have their answer. It turns out that when individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder that's characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. In fact, scientists have found that the rate of psychopathy in prisons is around 23 percent greater than the average population, which is around one percent.
In order to find out a little bit more about empathy dysfunction in psychopaths, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the brains of 121 inmates of a medium-security prison. Each of the participants was shown visual scenarios that illustrated physical pain, such as a finger caught between a door. The participant was then invited to imagine that this accident happened to themselves, or somebody else.
Each of the participants was then assessed with a diagnostic tool, PCL-R, in order to identify their degree of psychopathic tendencies. The volunteers were then divided into three groups: highly, moderately and weakly psychopathic. The researchers then assessed the different groups.
The scientists found that when highly psychopathic participants imagined pain to themselves, they showed a typical neural response within the brain regions involved in empathy for pain, including the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, somatosensory cortex and the right amygdala. Yet when they imagined pain to others, these regions failed to become active. In addition, psychopaths showed an increased response in the ventral striatum, an area known to be involved in pleasure, when imagining others in pain.
In fact, the findings seem to suggest that those with high scores on psychopathy might actually enjoy imagining pain inflicted on others. Yet the research could also help those with psychopathy. It could help create intervention programs in a domain where therapeutic pessimism is more the rule than the exception. In addition, altered connectivity may constitute novel targets for intervention.
The findings are published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
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First Posted: Sep 26, 2013 10:04 AM EDT
Psychopaths often lack empathy and remorse. Until now, though, researchers have been unsure exactly what the neurological basis was for empathy dysfunction in psychopaths. Now, they have their answer. It turns out that when individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder that's characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. In fact, scientists have found that the rate of psychopathy in prisons is around 23 percent greater than the average population, which is around one percent.
In order to find out a little bit more about empathy dysfunction in psychopaths, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the brains of 121 inmates of a medium-security prison. Each of the participants was shown visual scenarios that illustrated physical pain, such as a finger caught between a door. The participant was then invited to imagine that this accident happened to themselves, or somebody else.
Each of the participants was then assessed with a diagnostic tool, PCL-R, in order to identify their degree of psychopathic tendencies. The volunteers were then divided into three groups: highly, moderately and weakly psychopathic. The researchers then assessed the different groups.
The scientists found that when highly psychopathic participants imagined pain to themselves, they showed a typical neural response within the brain regions involved in empathy for pain, including the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, somatosensory cortex and the right amygdala. Yet when they imagined pain to others, these regions failed to become active. In addition, psychopaths showed an increased response in the ventral striatum, an area known to be involved in pleasure, when imagining others in pain.
In fact, the findings seem to suggest that those with high scores on psychopathy might actually enjoy imagining pain inflicted on others. Yet the research could also help those with psychopathy. It could help create intervention programs in a domain where therapeutic pessimism is more the rule than the exception. In addition, altered connectivity may constitute novel targets for intervention.
The findings are published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone