Psychopathy linked to brain abnormalities
May 11, 2012
Psychopaths show areas of reduced gray matter volume in the temporal pole (credit: Gregory, S. et al./Archives of General Psychiatry)
New research provides the strongest evidence to date that psychopathy is linked to specific structural abnormalities in the brain. The study, led by researchers at King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) is the first to confirm that psychopathy is a distinct neuro-developmental sub-group of anti-social personality disorder (ASPD).
Most violent crimes are committed by a small group of persistent male offenders with ASPD. Approximately half of male prisoners in England and Wales will meet diagnostic criteria for ASPD, characterized by emotional instability, impulsivity and high levels of mood and anxiety disorders.
However, about one third of such men will meet additional diagnostic criteria for psychopathy (ASPD+P). They are characterised by a lack of empathy and remorse, and use aggression in a planned way to secure what they want (status, money etc.).
Previous research has shown that psychopaths’ brains differ structurally from healthy brains, but until now, none have examined these differences within a population of violent offenders with ASPD.
“Using MRI scans we found that psychopaths had structural brain abnormalities in key areas of their ‘social brains’ compared to those who just had ASPD,:”Dr Nigel Blackwood from the IoP at King’s and lead author of the study. ”This adds to behavioral and developmental evidence that psychopathy is an important subgroup of ASPD with a different neurobiological basis and different treatment needs.
“There is a clear behavioral difference amongst those diagnosed with ASPD depending on whether or not they also have psychopathy. We describe those without psychopathy as ‘hot-headed’ and those with psychopathy as ‘cold-hearted’. The ‘cold-hearted’ psychopathic group begin offending earlier, engage in a broader range and greater density of offending behaviours, and respond less well to treatment programmes in adulthood, compared to the ‘hot-headed’ group. We now know that this behavioural difference corresponds to very specific structural brain abnormalities which underpin psychopathic behaviour, such as profound deficits in empathising with the distress of others.”
The researchers used MRI to scan the brains of 44 violent adult male offenders diagnosed with Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD). Crimes committed included murder, rape, attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. Of these, 17 met the diagnosis for psychopathy (ASPD+P) and 27 did not (ASPD-P). They also scanned the brains of 22 healthy non-offenders.
The study found that ASPD+P offenders displayed significantly reduced grey matter volumes in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles compared to ASPD-P offenders and healthy non-offenders. These areas are important in understanding other people’s emotions and intentions and are activated when people think about moral behaviour. Damage to these areas is associated with impaired empathising with other people, poor response to fear and distress and a lack of ‘self-conscious’ emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.
Ref.: Gregory, S. et al. ‘The Antisocial Brain: Psychopathy Matters – a structural MRI investigation of antisocial male offenders’, Archives of General Psychiatry, 2012, DOI: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2012.222
Comments (4)
by Singularity Utopia
The psychopathic lack of empathy has been determined based on civilization. There is no control where the “psychopath” is evaluated within a “normal” (not deranged) civilization. Imagine a control civilization very different to our current one where we don’t constantly need to lock homes, cars, bikes, phones, computers etc.
Our current civilization is one of constant fear where nobody is trusted. Regulation of socioeconomic interactions via money indicates deep distrust. People must pay the correct amount of money because without monetary prices the idea is people would “steal” the product, therefore prices prevent theft, prices symbolize distrust, without prices people would unfairly take a greedy amount of product-resource without consideration for others.
Ironically money does not cure our greedy lack of empathy; money merely normalizes it, money civilizes and regulates our lack of empathy regarding resource acquisition, money conceals our lack of empathy. Money allows an elite group of people to “legally-steal” a disproportion amount of resources. Money creates a sense of pseudo-order, pseudo-empathy, pseudo-sanity, pseudo-logic. Money is a charade, a sham, a hoax, to conceal a fundamental lack of empathy regarding predominantly unintelligent humans.
The rule of money (a civilization based on money) is severely lacking in empathy because the idea of such a civilization is to earn more money than other people via crushing your competition. For example you can only have higher wages if someone else (a fellow worker) has lower wages. A business cannot give all workers an executive pay-package, thus a civilization based on money must always crush competitors (fellow workers), which is not empathic, thus civilization is essentially psychopathic. So-called “psychopaths” are merely scapegoats.
Nearly all people want to be rich. People would happily accept ten million dollars without overt worry about the ramifications of such disproportionate wealth. Lawful acquisition of such a large amount of money does not alter the pain associated with the wealth imbalance, but people rarely have empathy regarding that pain. Legalized wealth imbalance does not make the imbalance empathic.
What appears to be psychopathic lack of empathy could easily be wholly a symptom of a particular brain structure responding to a particular civilization. Un-empathic responses could principally be due to the nature of civilization not the nature of allegedly abnormal brains. Overt lack of empathy in a hostile-deranged civilization could be very sane. Psychopathy could be a very logical response, but considering the unaware and illogical nature of our civilization it is unsurprising to see the honesty of psychopathy deemed a disease or abnormality.
Considering neural plasticity and epigentics we would need to raise a person possessing a potentially psychopathic brain within a “control civilization” where civilization isn’t based on money. The control civilization would be one where people do not need to lock everything due to a constant fear of theft. I suspect the behavior of a potential psychopath would be very different if raised wholly in a sane civilization contrary to our current civilization. Within our deranged civilization a brain resulting in psychopathy could alternatively lead to very advantageous brain structures if the brain developed within a sane (empathic) civilization.
The source of the problem is a flawed civilization, thus we should treat the source before addressing the alleged secondary symptoms: individual brains. Current minority brain-types (psychopathic brains), or the collective flaws of all humans alive today, do not constitute the source of our abnormal civilization despite civilization being a product of human brains. Over a long period of time the collective flaws of all human brains have created a deeply flawed civilization. Human brains have created civilization but civilization was not created by humans living today. Civilization is the emphasis (consolidation) of flawed human thinking from many generations. Our current generation of brains is not the source. Excepting our continued minor complicity within a flawed civilization, blame regarding social-dysfunction cannot be placed onto individual psychopathic brains or onto all humans currently alive. Civilization has become vastly greater than the sum of our collective brains. Civilization is the source of the problem because our brains are thrust into a deeply ingrained type of deranged civilization. The source of societal dysfunction is definitely not one minority brain type such as the psychopathic brain. The source is civilization.
by Ntzo
What else do these psychopaths have in common? Its been shown that child abuse can alter a person’s brain, “trigger” schizophrenia, prime the brain for future mental illness, etc. What of all the psychopaths who are never caught? Its impossible to really study the population of “psychopaths”, because the most adept escape detection. Not to mention the fact that the various DSM listings are constantly changing, because its content is basically decided on by vote.
by Singularity Utopia
The brains of psychopaths are undoubtedly different, but my issue is how that difference is interpreted. For example the “One Eyed King” in the “Country of the Blind” by H G Wells allegedly had a diseased mind due to the presence of his eyes, in contrast to “normal” eyeless people who were sane due to the absence of eyes.
Sanity (mental health) in our world is erroneously determined based on the assumption of society (civilization) being sane. Brain differences in mentally disturbed people could actually be good brain structures which are merely incompatible with a deranged civilization. Dr Erich Fromm, in his book The Sane Society, stated alienated psychiatrists will define mental health in terms of the alienated personality therefore they will erroneously consider sickness to be health, and vice-versa. The same fallacious assumption of mental health could apply to neuro-scientists. Before decreeing the brain is faulty I suggest we should first make civilization sane rather than adapting our brains to a flawed civilization.
by NakedApe
Oh, well let’s just create a society of psychopaths as the norm and see how functional such a society will be. Ooops, it’s already been tried in Hitler’s Germany. We all know how well that worked out! Calling psychopathy normal and human goodness and empathy abnormal is pretty perverse, I would say. If human goodness wasn’t necessary for our coexistence as a social species evolution wouldn’t have bothered to bring it about but human societies couldn’t function because they would quickly disintegrate into chaos and extinction. Hence, psychopathy should be viewed as abnormal, indeed.