The Brain of a Psychopath

When we think of a psychopath, we always think how can someone do such horrific things. We usually come to a conclusion that an external factor may have triggered the behavior or even a rough childhood. However, would we ever have imagined that we could predict if someone has a higher chance of becoming a psychopath through a brain scan? In James Fallen book, The Psychopath Inside, Fallen did some research on the activity of the brain of a psychopath and realizes that his brain scan is similar to a brain scan of a psychopath. He has seen many scans of the brain and understands the anatomy of the brain very well. When Fallen compared the two scans of a normal brain and a psychopath’s brain, he saw "a decrease of activity in the orbital cortex and the area around the amygdala."(Fallen 45) These are the areas of the brain that are known to inhibit behavior in a healthy brain. The frontal lobe of a healthy brain is brighter compared to the psychopath’s brain. This area is known to have the conscious, which the psychopath seems to be lacking according to these scans. This is just one of the factors that differs a healthy brain from a brain of a psychopath. Also Fallen explained that psychopathy is a poorly functioning ventral system but have a normal function dorsal system. The loss of function in the limbic cortex shows that they lack empathy, which is why they are able to plan execution in an intense way. However, because they do have a normal function dorsal system, psychopaths appear to be nice and caring which is why it is hard to tell if someone is a psychopath or not. 

 

Reading some article on Scientific American, I came across an article “Psychopaths Might Have an Impaired Empathy Circuit”. The article was based off a research that was conducted at University of Chicago analyzing the brains of prisoners who may contain the ability of being a psychopath. They study was done on 121 male participants. Dr. Jean Decety study was conducted by having the inmate look at photographs that showed pain in some way. In order to study their empathy, the inmates were instructed to imagine the image happening to himself or herself or to someone else. The study showed that when imaging pain on someone else, the brain showed abnormality near the amygdala and some areas of pleasure were activated. Similar to the findings of James Fallon, the study showed that there was less of activity in the amygdala. The amygdala plays a part in processing emotions. This is similar to the result Fallen found in his research. The lack of empathy and consciousness is what allows a psychopath to commit a horrific crime without any stress or regrets. Dr. Decety used a MRI to see the connectivity of the brain while the inmates looked at images. The image below shows that the area circled for the psychopath shows less connection with the rest of the empathy regions when compared to the normal brain scan.

Reference

Fallon, James H. The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. New York: Current, 2013. Print.

Knight, M. (2013, December 19). Psychopaths Might Have an Impaired Empathy Circuit. Retrieved February 28, 2015,

From http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychopaths-might-have-an-impaired-empathy-circuit/