How The Psychopath's Brain Works

We have seen infamous psychopaths, like Jeffery Dahmer, in the news. After hearing about the crimes they committed it was obvious that these people had no empathy. Empathy is something we began to understand in childhood. It is the ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes" and understand what they are feeling, especially in situations regarding pain. Psychopaths do not understand empathy like most others do. Scientific advances have helped us understand the biological reasons why psychopaths do not have this ability. 

Dr. Michael Koenigs was studying the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in connection to anxiety and depression when he began to relate these structures to psychopathy. His subjects in these studies had lesions in their vmPFC. One woman had a special case; She suffered from depression and was attempting suicide when she shot out her vmPFC. After she healed from this injury she did not feel depression or anxiety like she had in the past and she seemed like a completely different person. She became impulsive, irritable, less empathetic, and lazy. These are many of the characteristics of a psychopath. 

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex controls the amygdala, emotional regulation, and risk evaluation. It has now been connected to empathy and there have been many studies done with psychopaths, particularly through prisons because most psychopaths are incarcerated. These studies, like ones Dr. Koenigs has performed as well as one explained in Science Daily, begin with a psychological assessment. Prisoners who volunteer for the study are evaluated to determine if they are considered a psychopath. Next they use fMRI scans to monitor the prisoners’ brains while showing them videos of people in pain. The brain scan results showed that the psychopaths had much less activation in the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which correlates to what was said earlier in regards to Dr. Koenigs’ subject.  

Understanding where the problems in this mental illness originate pave the way to finding a treatment and hopefully a cure. We now know that treatment research should focus on the activation of neurons in the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. 

Work Cited

University of Chicago. "Psychopaths are not neurally equipped to have concern for others." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 April 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130424161108.htm>.