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As words can be the soul's window, scientists are learning to peer through it: Computerized text analysis shows that psychopathic killers make identifiable word choices -- beyond conscious control -- when talking about their crimes.
in list: Neuroethics
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The words of psychopathic murderers match their personalities, which reflect selfishness, detachment from their crimes and emotional flatness
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Psychopaths used more conjunctions like "because," "since" or "so that," implying that the crime "had to be done" to obtain a particular goal. They used twice as many words relating to physical needs, such as food, sex or money, while non-psychopaths used more words about social needs, including family, religion and spirituality. Unveiling their predatory nature in their own description, the psychopaths often included details of what they had to eat on the day of their crime.
psychopathy is a distinct neuro-developmental sub-group of anti-social personality disorder
in list: Neuroethics
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psychopathy is a distinct neuro-developmental sub-group of anti-social personality disorder
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Approximately half of male prisoners in England and Wales will meet diagnostic criteria for ASPD. The majority of such men are not true psychopaths (ASPD-P). They are characterised by emotional instability, impulsivity and high levels of mood and anxiety disorders. They typically use aggression in a reactive way in response to a perceived threat or sense of frustration.
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Psychopaths are known to be characterized by callousness, diminished capacity for remorse, and lack of empathy. However, the exact cause of these personality traits is an area of scientific debate. The results of a new study, reported in the May 2010 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, show striking similarities between the mental impairments observed in psychopaths and those seen in patients with frontal lobe damage.
in list: Neuroethics
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striking similarities between the mental impairments observed in psychopaths and those seen in patients with frontal lobe damage.
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ToM is made up of different aspects: a cognitive part, which requires inferences about knowledge and beliefs, and another part which requires the understanding of emotions.
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People diagnosed as psychopathic have difficulty showing empathy, just like patients who have suffered frontal head injury.
in list: Neuroethics
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People diagnosed as psychopathic have difficulty showing empathy, just like patients who have suffered frontal head injury.
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Psychopathy is a personality disorder that finds expression in extreme anti-social behavior and intentional harm to others, including a lack of compassion and empathy.
Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it.
Mirror neurons, the brain cells believed to be the basis for empathy, have recently been identified in the human brain. And yet we’re left to explain the disjuncture between this deep-seated, pre-reflective, moral intuition and the paucity of actual empathic behavior, especially in certain cultures. I suggest that answers may be found in the bidirectional connection between culture and brain development.
Empathy’s not a uniquely human trait, explains primatologist Frans de Waal. Apes and other animals feel it as well, suggesting that empathy is truly an essential part of who we are. Franz de Waal
Watching another person being touched activates a similar neural circuit to actual touch and, for some people with 'mirror-touch' synesthesia, can produce a felt tactile sensation on their own body. In this study, we provide evidence for the existence of this type of synesthesia and show that it correlates with heightened empathic ability. This is consistent with the notion that we empathize with others through a process of simulation.
Researchers have discovered a genetic variation that may contribute to how empathetic a human is, and how that person reacts to stress. In the first study of its kind, a variation in the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin's receptor was linked to a person's ability to infer the mental state of others.
In this Edge Video, psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen looks at one test he's developed to see if there are differences between males and females in the mind.
A popular account for how we empathise with other people's physical pain involves the idea that we perform a mental simulation of their suffering, using the pain pathways of our own brain. Support for this comes from research showing that when I see you in pain, the pain areas of my own brain are pricked into activity.
Now an intriguing study by Nicolas Danziger and colleagues has tested this simulation account with the help of patients with congenital insensitivity to pain - that is, they've grown up with abnormal pain fibres, thus rendering them unable to feel physical pain. The findings may require us to rethink the way we characterise some brain areas associated with pain processing. (BPS RESEARCH DIGEST)
"The inhibitory apparatus in place for 'professional' killer animals, those with teeth designed to rip and puncture flesh, jaws that are built to crush bones, claws intended to shred meat and capture prey, which prevent them from annihilating their own species is not in place for humans. Humans were not designed to be specialized killers, like panthers, lions, or tigers. Early humans, similar to other primates were largely foragers, scavengers, and opportunists." - Associated Content
"Based on recent findings from neuroscience we can plausibly deduce that the mirror neurons of the viewer were engaged by these images of others suffering. The appeal was to the public's awakened sense of compassion and revulsion toward graphic depictions of the wholesale violence, barbarity, and torture routinely practiced on these Atlantic voyages. Rediker notes that the images would instantaneously "make the viewer identify and sympathize with the 'injured Africans' on the lower deck of the ship . . ." while also producing a sense of moral outrage (p. 315, Olson, 2008)."
A study recently published by Helmut Prior and his associates of the Institute of Psychology at Goethe University in Frankfurt has demonstrated that magpies also demonstrate this capacity. This has important implications for evolutionary theory, as mammalian and avian brains are completely different and have developed along different evolutionary lines; it would appear that the capacity for self-awareness has developed twice. | Psychology Today Blogs
in list: Evolution
"Frans de Waal and Daniel Batson present at the 2007 Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity conference hosted by the National Humanities Center."
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