Neural Correlates of Common Psychopathic Traits and Alikeness in Other Disorders

People have always been fascinated by the minds of psychopaths. Validation of this ranges from its prevalence in mainstream media, to the abundance of horror flicks produced each year, to the popularity of TV series like American Horror Story, featuring this season’s beloved psychopath, “Dandy.” And fascinated we should be, the impact psychopaths have on society and the criminal justice system is tremendous. According to an article by Kent Kiehl and Morris Hoffman (2011), “Psychopaths are twenty to twenty-five times more likely than non-psychopaths to be in prison, four to eight times more likely to violently recidivate compared to non-psychopaths, and are resistant to most forms of treatment.” This is why research on the mind of individuals with psychopathic personality is so imperative—the interest of developing successful treatment options. Moreover, not only does this research shed light on the mysteries of psychopathic tendencies, but also the functionality and underlying mental processes of the normal human brain.

Kiehl, who has been studying the neurology of psychopaths for decades, has found that many of the behavioral markers of psychopathy such as a lack of empathy, moral conscious, and a poor response to fear, appear to be intimately linked with the paralimbic regions. Specifically, fMRI scans show reduced activity in the amygdala, and anterior and posterior cingulate, as well as increased activity in the lateral frontal cortex in comparison to non-psychopaths (Kiehl & Hoffman). From the mouth of Kiehl, “These findings dovetail nicely with the central paradox of the psychopath: he is completely rational but morally insane. He is missing the moral core, which seems to be largely connected to the paralimbic regions.”

In light of their findings, and in combination with several other treatment theories, Kiehl and Hoffman developed a therapy program they termed “decompression treatment,” that focuses on mending the social deficits present in psychopaths. The treatment was significantly more effective than any previous treatment of psychopathy; however, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the effects of the treatment were particularly sizable. In fact, therapies until recent have proven time and time again that treatment of psychopaths is incorrigible. What is more, some treatments, such as group therapy, have the possibility of making matters worse, increasing psychopathic tendencies.

Because decompression treatment is very intense, requiring one on one therapeutic treatment that lasts several hours a day for a minimum of six months, the program is very costly. However, due to the high costs of incarceration, the initial high cost was made up for by its effectiveness.

Nevertheless, there is still need for a less time consuming program that illuminates and targets the core functional neural mechanisms underlying the individual emotional, cognitive, and social markers of psychopathy, rather than a holistic top-down treatment approach.