If a person cannot understand the negative impact of their action due to their biology, then how can they be prevented from doing so? Feelings of guilt and empathy are not present in the mind of a psychopath. Understanding the mind of a psychopath helps to devise a system designed to guide the individual to act in a way that is acceptable in society. Regular offenders, are quick-tempered, overly responsive to threat, and can be impulsively aggressive. In short, regular offenders are hyper-reactive. Psychopaths, on the other hand, are cold and calculating. They have mild responses to threats, or low emotional reactivity, and their aggression is premeditated. Many researchers are studying the difference in brain structures between these two groups in order to gain more insight on how to help these individuals become more cohesive members of society.
Researchers gathered participants in three conditions: offenders with antisocial personality disorder as well as psychopathy, offenders with antisocial personality disorder only, and a control sample of healthy non-offenders. Upon studying Magnetic Resonance Imaging results from all of the participants, researchers found a significant difference in psychopathic offenders in both the gray matter, which is responsible for processing information, and the white matter, which is responsible for connecting the flow of information throughout different parts of the brain. More specifically, significant differences were found in the scans of psychopathic offenders in the areas of the gray matter, specifically the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and the temporal poles bilaterally. These areas are responsible for “empathy, the processing of pro-social emotions such as guilt and embarrassment, and moral reasoning”. In the white matter tracts, significant differences were found in a brain structure that links together the medial frontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex: the dorsal cingulum. These areas are important to the processing of empathy, so abnormalities to the connection of these areas diminishes empathy, a characteristic of psychopathy.
In addition, these findings also suggests that psychopaths do not learn from punishment. The participants were placed in a scanner and asked to play an image matching game in which the reward for correct response was not consistent. "Offenders with psychopathy may only consider the possible positive consequences and fail to take account of the likely negative consequences. Consequently, their behavior often leads to punishment rather than reward as they had expected," Hodgins said. Abnormalities in the response to punishment were found in the insula and posterior cingulate in psychopathic offenders. These areas have been shown to activate during instances of actually experiencing emotion and seeing another experience emotion; in other words, these areas help a person to feel empathetic for a person. The previous MRI results showed abnormalities in the white matter tract that connects these two areas: the dorsal cingulum. These findings support the idea that there is a difference in the neuronal mechanism of learning from punishment and feeling empathy in psychopathic individuals.
These results help researchers understand psychopathy at the neuronal level, but how can this information be applied to reduce recidivism in psychopathic criminals? Extensive research suggests that these abnormalities can be greatly reduced with early childhood intervention. Studies have suggested that empathy is rooted in imitation and can be implemented early while infants are constantly mirroring behavior. Programs that teach parents how and when to properly punish their children have been shown to significantly reduce conduct problems in the future. Implementing behavioral learning programs during childhood that specifically target the mechanisms responsible for prosocial behavior, learning from punishments, empathetic responses has been shown to significantly reduce future crimes.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150127212158.htm
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