Every day in the news we hear about someone that was raped or murdered. Though what is rare is hearing about a serial killer that committed multiple rapes and murders. What is even rarer is a serial killer that does not show remorse for what he or she has done, which is labeled as a psychopath. When we hear about these kinds of cases we think to ourselves what could possibly be wrong with them that they could commit atrocious acts and feel nothing when reflecting on their crimes. Because of this, people tend to think of psychopaths as simply being evil but Dr. Kent Kiehl, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico, has set out to show that psychopathology is a disorder that is rooted in brain. He also believes that the lack of empathy also plays a important role in a psychopath's behavior.
Dr. Keihl started by examining Brian Dugan, who was convicted of ; the brutal rapes and murders of 2 - 7 year old girls, a 27 year old nurse, and several other rapes. According to Keihl, Brian struggles to understand why people even care about his crimes and he can recount these crimes with simplicity, as if someone asked him what he had for breakfast.
Dr. Keihl's lab built a mobile brain scanner to take into the prison to take images of Brian's brain during a few tasks. Specifically Dr, Keihl wanted to look at the brain density and activity compared to normal brains during these tasks. When taking images of Brian's brain he saw that there were low levels of density in the para-limbic system, which includes areas like the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex (areas we learned in class are responsible for emotion processing). He concluded from this that this system did not develop properly in Brian and he further suggests this may be genetically determined. He also monitored Brian’s reaction to distressing images, and found low activity in Brian’s para-limbic during emotion processing. Dr. Keihl conducted the same test on a number of subjects in prisons across the US. He concluded that psychopaths simply lack an emotional ability, as some people lack intellectual ability. He also, is working on devising a system to detect the early cues of a future psychopath in children and an effective way to intervene.
We learned in class that empathy is not innate because children under 3 years of age cannot demonstrate it, and that it emerges around the time children develop cognitive understanding. We also learned that decision making is influenced by learned associations between emotional events and the affective response that occurs as a result. So this makes me question of if the density of the para-limbic areas is genetic or just the result of the environment in which the child grew up. Also, it would be interesting to see how mirror neurons respond in psychopaths because we learned in class that these neurons are important for our ability to empathize with others by permitting us to stimulate others’ internal states within our own bodies.
Here is the link to the article : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15386740
I find the idea of the psychopath brain very interesting. I know from research of psychopaths, especially serial killers, that there is a trend with parents who were really strict or had their own problems in one way or another. What I really find interesting though, even though it is known that they don't experience emotion the way we do, how does not experiencing emotion compel some of them to commit such distressing acts to others? What guides them to do something of that sort instead of energizing their time into something like art? or a sport? There are some psychopaths who grew up to be brilliant business man or doctors so sometimes that is not always the case. Serial killers like Ted Bundy were very successful and organized. Then there was sudden disorganization and he stopped showing up to important meetings and kind of fell out of his professional life, around the same time he started committing the murders. This makes me wonder about the brain and our ability to feel and our ability to read other's emotions and use them as cues to figure out how to react to to others. Seems like the ability to feel emotion is what sort of makes us human. Not having this ability (limited ability) seems to invoke sort of an animal instinct in people. Psychopaths tend to be impulsive and set on satisfying their needs. The para-limbic (emotional) system is located in the prefrontal cortex the same place where our higher processing takes place such as morals and ethics. I also found the mirror neuron idea interesting. I know that they have done experiments on psychopaths to see how they respond to other's emotions and they tend to make more errors interpreting emotion and tone of voice than we do. It would be awesome to come across an article that spoke of the mirror neurons in this aspect since psychopaths tend to look into our cues and try to imitate them so that they can appear normal.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting subject, seeing as how I am going to graduate school for forensic psychology. I do believe there is a genetic risk for lack of empathy and psychopathy, but there are more factors contributing to this outcome. A person may be born with this genetic risk, but turn out fine because of their environment. Environment, social interactions, and several factors go into someone being a psychopath. I hope that we can identify soon exactly the genetic risks, so we can help these children grow up in a normal environment. Finding this genetic risk could help keep people safe from themselves and others. This is something I would like to read further about.
ReplyDeleteI think this is very interesting. So people who have been getting this diagnoses show a lower density of grey matter in the amygdala as well as other parts of the brain. I wonder if this abnormality was organic and therefore affected this persons behaviors or; if some kind of experience was reacted to in a way that he formed this disturbance. Either way I think that this is another fascinating example of how our morals, ethics, and complete cognitive concept of the world is a reflection of what is going on inside the brain.
ReplyDeleteI think this is very interesting. So people who have been getting this diagnoses show a lower density of grey matter in the amygdala as well as other parts of the brain. I wonder if this abnormality was organic and therefore affected this persons behaviors or; if some kind of experience was reacted to in a way that he formed this disturbance. Either way I think that this is another fascinating example of how our morals, ethics, and complete cognitive concept of the world is a reflection of what is going on inside the brain.
ReplyDeleteThis article brings up an interesting problem. Those who are not mentally able to comprehend what they are doing are usually not convicted of crimes. This seems to suggest that psychopathology is an organic brain problem. Could the argument be made that they were not able to emotionally comprehend their crimes, and if this is a brain disorder, how should the law view this? It also raises the never ending question of nature versus nurture. Are they psychopaths because of their brains? Is the relationship causal or correlational?
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