Metaphorical truth moves into a literal truth in study about psychopaths

I don't know how many times I've heard discussions about criminals where one has been described as "wired differently" than regular folks. Turns out that it's true.

This study says that they indeed are wired differently. The neural paths that make you feel warm and cuddly, or guilty or fearful, just don't function the same way in psychopaths. Imagine if you were never burdened with caring about others. A life of crime would be so much easier. Being a politician, or a general, or a CEO of a big corporation, would also be easier, which explains why psychopathy occurs more frequently in those occupations.

"A marked lack of empathy is a hallmark characteristic of individuals with psychopathy," said the lead author of the study, Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. Psychopathy affects approximately 1 percent of the United States general population and 20 percent to 30 percent of the male and female U.S. prison population. Relative to non-psychopathic criminals, psychopaths are responsible for a disproportionate amount of repetitive crime and violence in society.

"This is the first time that neural processes associated with empathic processing have been directly examined in individuals with psychopathy, especially in response to the perception of other people in pain or distress," he added.

The results of the study, which could help clinical psychologists design better treatment programs for psychopaths, are published in the article, "Brain Responses to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals with Psychopathy," which appears online April 24 in the journalJAMA Psychiatry.

Joining Decety in the study were Laurie Skelly, a graduate student at UChicago; and Kent Kiehl, professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico.

For the study, the research team tested 80 prisoners between ages 18 and 50 at a correctional facility. The men volunteered for the test and were tested for levels of psychopathy using standard measures.

They were then studied with functional MRI technology, to determine their responses to a series of scenarios depicting people being intentionally hurt. They were also tested on their responses to seeing short videos of facial expressions showing pain.

The participants in the high psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and periaqueductal gray parts of the brain, but more activity in the striatum and the insula when compared to control participants, the study found.

The high response in the insula in psychopaths was an unexpected finding, as this region is critically involved in emotion and somatic resonance. Conversely, the diminished response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala is consistent with the affective neuroscience literature on psychopathy. This latter region is important for monitoring ongoing behavior, estimating consequences and incorporating emotional learning into moral decision-making, and plays a fundamental role in empathic concern and valuing the well-being of others.

"The neural response to distress of others such as pain is thought to reflect an aversive response in the observer that may act as a trigger to inhibit aggression or prompt motivation to help," the authors write in the paper.

"Hence, examining the neural response of individuals with psychopathy as they view others being harmed or expressing pain is an effective probe into the neural processes underlying affective and empathy deficits in psychopathy," the authors wrote.

The study with prisoners was supported with a $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.

What's next in this field of intellectual exploration? I suspect there will be work put in about "nature v. nurture" when it comes to psychopaths. That is, does it come from a bad home life versus just being a "bad seed"? As we know, it's during a child's first ten years that all sorts of remarkable brain development occurs, and we know that in other areas of personality there are brain changes that reflect that.

Statistically, you can draw a correlation between a bad homelife, up to and including abuse in childhood, and criminality. You can trace the history of criminality in America with various underclasses. Italians and Irish, and to a lesser extent Jews, were big in organized crime when they were a suppressed immigrant class. You could draw a similar line with ethnicities and boxing. That's why I wouldn't doubt that the Boston Marathon bombers probably suffered abuse in childhood. Punching other people as a way of life suggests some level of psychopathy. Even more telling was the absolute lack of compassion it would take to plant bombs to kill and maim innocent people. There were plenty of reports that the surviving bomber spent the next several days around his campus with no signs of guilt or worry. Let me assure you, most people, if they were responsible for something so horrible, would have trouble living with themselves. Not so those brothers.

That doesn't necessarily eliminate the "bad seed" component of psychopathy. Some people may have certain genetic signatures that may more easily be expressed as psychopathological if that person is exposed to certain developmental insults as a child.

Being psychopathic must have had some natural benefit in humans. As I mentioned above, the same elements in psychopathy that make for being a good criminal also are quite helpful in all sorts of positions of leadership, and if you are a President sending thousands of troops to their death while your army commits all sorts of atrocities, you get a completely different reaction from the populace than if you, say, tortured kitties. As humans have moved into more and more complex societies being an unfeeling "lone wolf" is less and less acceptable. It's been suggested that the widespread use of capital punishment for any breach of social mores was a way for communities to weed out that "bad seed".

Read Leviticus to see all the things that called for capital punishment that just don't apply today. Many of these rules were put in place to keep a society healthy and functioning. As society becomes more complex the death penalty for such things as eating pork or wearing a cloth of two different fibers doesn't make sense. You are unlikely to get trichinosis these days.

So the trick to being a successful psychopath is probably, first, to not suffer too much abuse in childhood. But beyond that, if you are born into a successful (generally meaning rich and educated) family you have a good chance of growing up into a position of leadership.

You just can't let your fangs show.