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May

2012

Twins Study Finds Genetic Cause For Psychopathy

Dr. Essi Viding of the London Kings College Institute of Psychiatry and colleagues have found the tendency toward psychopathic behavior has a strong genetic component.

www.futurepundit.com/...002792.html

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in list: Neuroethics

May

2012

Current Scientific Views of Psychopathy

psi.sagepub.com/...93.1.full

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In the “old” or traditional view, psychopathy is seen as a unitary construct that is discrete and qualitatively different from nonpsychopathy. One either is or is not a psychopath.
a single-gene etiology (causal development) without too much influence from the environment
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- risk factors
- Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
- unemotional-predator
- Fearlessness in a prosocial personality represents a positive outcome
- “feckless disregard” toward others
- This feckless disregard may totally reflect a failure of socialization, in which the low-fear temperament represents a challenge to socializing agents, who are unable to produce a positive developmental trajectory
- peer groups may influence whether a criminal trajectory is involved
- we have three possible contributors (fearless temperament, low-affiliation temperament, the results of socializing agents) that come as continuous variables and interact to produce a developmental outcome involving behavior that we call psychopathic.
- The unique features of Factor 2 reflect a dimension of lifelong disinhibition or impulsivity combined with high negative affect (anxiety, depression, fear, anger, alienation) and antisocial behavior.
- a failure of a regulatory system that normally inhibits maladaptive behavior and emotional responses.
- strength of reward-seeking and emotionally reactive temperaments that are regulated by this system are also important
- refers to an outcome from a multidimensional, continuously variable set of etiological factors. It should not be reified
- the dimension that is not characteristic of what many regard as “true psychopathy” actually carries most of the predictive power, negating the notion that “psychopathy” as some uniform entity predicts future bad behavior.
- the criteria for scores on Factor 2 include past criminal behavior. It is axiomatic that past behavior is a predictor of future behavior of the same type, and the inclusion of past criminal behavior in Factor 2 confounds this atheoretical prediction with any theoretical interpretation of Factor 2’s prediction of future criminal behavior.
- there is little established validity to the idea that the construct of psychopathy predicts an especially negative future trajectory

Jun

2010

Inside the psychopath

www.friedgreentomatoes.org/...inside_the_psychopath.php

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in list: Neuroethics

Psychologists estimate that one in every 100 people is unfeeling enough to qualify as a psychopath, with an especially heavy concentration among criminals.
A psychological test designed to detect unconscious or frowned-upon attitudes picked up a decided tendency among psychopathic murderers to have abnormally positive attitudes toward violence
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- psychopaths may have an imbalance of the brain chemicals serotonin and dopamine
- ''the psychopath finds it difficult to process, handle, or use emotional material in the same way the rest of us do,''
- tended to find abnormal activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain seen as the seat of basic emotions like fear, and the orbito-frontal cortex, which is involved in helping people adjust their behavior in response to reward or punishment.
- ''emotion for the psychopath is like a second language,'' one he or she must struggle to speak and never master deep down. Emotions for psychopaths are abstractions
- The psychological test of attitudes toward violence published in Nature may be usable to predict how violent a psychopath is likely to be, but more research is needed, according to Gray. A similar test shows promise in revealing attitudes toward pedophilia, she said.
  
  But a Harvard expert on the test used in the Nature study, which is called an Implicit Association Test, expressed concern: ''The IAT is not, and never will be a test like a DNA test,'' said Mahzarin Banaji. ''It is meant for research, not diagnosis,'' she said.

Jun

2010

A Psychopath's Brain In The Courtroom

"Neuroscience and neuroimaging is going to change the whole philosophy about how we punish and how we decide who to incapacitate and how we decide how to deal with people," he says, echoing comments of a growing number of leading scholars across the country, including Princeton and Harvard.

www.npr.org/...story.php

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in list: Neuroethics

the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which measures traits such as the inability to feel empathy or remorse, pathological lying, or impulsivity
"The scores range from zero to 40," Kiehl explains in his sunny office overlooking a golf course. "The average person in the community, a male, will score about 4 or 5. Your average inmate will score about 22. An individual with psychopathy is typically described as 30 or above. Brian scored 38.5 basically. He was in the 99th percentile."
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- The subjects rate whether the picture is a moral violation on a scale of 1 to 5. Kiehl says most psychopaths do not differ from normal subjects in the way they rate the photos: Both psychopaths and the average person rank the KKK with a burning cross as a moral violation. But there's a key difference: Psychopaths' brains behave differently from that of a nonpsychopathic person. When a normal person sees a morally objectionable photo, his limbic system lights up. This is what Kiehl calls the "emotional circuit," involving the orbital cortex above the eyes and the amygdala deep in the brain. But Kiehl says when psychopaths like Dugan see the KKK picture, their emotional circuit does not engage in the same way.
- "Someone shouldn't be executed for a condition that they were born with, because it's not their fault,"
- "I think the key idea here is the law is not interested in brain abnormalities. The law is interested in whether or not someone at the time that the criminal act occurred understood the difference between right and wrong."

Sep

2011

Neurobiological basis of psychopathy

bjp.rcpsych.org/...5.full

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in list: Neuroethics

characterised in part by a diminished capacity for remorse and poor behavioural controls ( Hare, 1991).
Only onethird of those who are diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder meet criteria for psychopathy ( Hart & Hare, 1996).
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- mostly instrumental in nature, i.e. goal-directed towards achieving money, sexual opportunities or increased status
- interferes with socialisation
- the emotional impairment found in individuals with psychopathy interferes with socialisation such that the individual does not learn to avoid antisocial behaviour.
- Individuals with psychopathy present with severe difficulties in both aversive conditioning and instrumental learning ( Patrick, 1994; Blair, 2001). Moreover, they have particular difficulties processing the fearfulness and sadness of others ( Blair, 2001).
- The amygdala is involved in aversive conditioning and instrumental learning ( LeDoux, 1998). It is also involved in the response to fearful and sad facial expressions ( Blair et al, 1999). The amygdala is thus involved in all the processes that, when impaired, give rise to the functional impairments shown by individuals with psychopathy. It is therefore suggested that amygdala dysfunction is one of the core neural systems implicated in the pathology of psychopathy ( Patrick, 1994; Blair et al, 1999).
- amygdaloid volume and degree of psychopathy in violent offenders
- high levels of psychopathy were associated with reduced amygdaloid volume
- a reduced amygdala response in the high-scoring group, relative to the low-scoring group, during the processing of words of negative valence.
- neuropsychological work with individuals with psychopathy, unlike work with individuals who are violent, has repeatedly found frontal functioning to be intact
- This study reported reduced prefrontal grey, but not white, matter volume in these individuals. However, Raine et al were unable to differentiate between grey matter from different regions of the frontal cortex. This is unfortunate, as although it appears clear that there is no generalised frontal cortical dysfunction in individuals with psychopathy there is one region of the frontal cortex that could be impaired, i.e. the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).
- the medial OFC, receives extensive projections from, and sends extensive projections to, the amygdala
- Patients with ‘acquired sociopathy’ can present with socially inappropriate behaviour and aggression following their lesion.
- the neural structures implicated in psychopathic pathology include the amygdala and OFC.
- pathology in the noradrenergic system can lead to the observed amygdala dysfunction
- blocks the improvement in episodic memory for emotionally arousing events, as well as disrupting the processing of sad facial expressions
- mice lacking a functional tailless protein show reduced amygdaloid volume.
- The lifestyle of the individual with psychopathy may exacerbate any neurobiological impairments.
- chronic amphetamine misuse has been shown to lead to disturbance in functions mediated by the OFC
- detrimentally affects two processes that are required for socialisation, i.e. aversive conditioning and instrumental learning

Nov

2011

Psychopaths' brains show differences in structure and function

medicalxpress.com/...ains-differences-function.html

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in list: Neuroethics

Jun

2010

A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret

He's clearly oversimplifying, but Fallon says the orbital cortex puts a brake on another part of the brain called the amygdala, which is involved with aggression and appetites. But in some people, there's an imbalance - the orbital cortex isn't doing its job - perhaps because the person had a brain injury or was born that way.

preview.npr.org/...story.php

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in list: Neuroethics

Jan

2009

Neurobiological basis of psychopathy - Blair

Blair 182 (1): 5 -- The British Journal of Psychiatry

bjp.rcpsych.org/...5

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in list: Neuroethics

Dec

2008

Moral Responsibility and the Psychopath

Psychopathy involves impaired capacity for prudential and moral reasoning due to impaired capacity for empathy, remorse, and sensitivity to fear-inducing stimuli. Brain abnormalities and genetic polymorphisms associated with these traits appear to justify the claim that psychopaths cannot be morally responsible for their behavior. Yet psychopaths are capable of instrumental reasoning in achieving their goals, which suggests that they have some capacity to respond to moral reasons against performing harmful acts and refrain from performing them. The cognitive and affective impairment of the psychopath justifies mitigated responsibility, but not excuse.

www.springerlink.com/...a114l7667w6333g1

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