Brain Points

Talk: Integrating Psychological Neuroscience Perspectives on Psychopathy (Joseph Newman)

         Newman begins by addressing the fact that there exists a heterogeneity of criminal behavior.  The behavior is broken into five categories.  "Neurotic" offenders are those with emotion related problems.  "Sub-cultural" offenders are those whose offenses stem from social problems.  "Inadequate" offenders suffer from intellectual problems. Lastly, "primary psychopathy" offenders suffer from an intrinsic problem with socialization.  There is something missing that is not like other criminal behavior.

         The psychopathy construct is rather difficult to identify.  As described in Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity, the individuals he encountered seemed to be completely normal.  Though they seemed like functional and capable individuals, they failed at many aspects of life.  This can be exemplified through multiple failed relationships or the inability to hold a job

         Lyken's "low fear" hypothesis rests on the notion that psychopaths have low fear.  Low fear in combination with poor fear conditioning causes poor passive avoidance.  This hypothesis was supported by weak electrodermal activity in response to threat/punishment cues, deficits in emotion-modulated startle during violent picture viewing, deficits in fear conditioning, and reduced amygdala activation. 

        Response modulated models attempt to understand the goal oriented behavior of psychopaths.  Essentially, once they focus on a certain goal, they become oblivious to the surrounding context.  Once they focus on a certain task or goal, they cannot be moved by the things that would cause others to react.  It is not necessarily that they do not feel fear,  rather it is the idea that something else occupies their attention. 

         A study, of which Newman was a part, helped to evaluate psychopaths.  The results of this study support the response modulated models mentioned above.  This study supported the idea that fear can be elicited from psychopaths. For instance, a sudden noise creates a response that can be measured using eye blink magnitude.  In short, when a psychopath focuses on something that induces fear, they experience the fear. 

         A demonstration of such focus is demonstrated in the Box Stroop Task.  Using a computer, the subject is presented with a box with colored frame.  In the middle of the  box is a word that spells a color.  The word is a different color than the frame surrounding the box.  If instructed to say the color of the frame and ignore the word, the psychopathic group would perform better on this task. Once focused on an objective, they become oblivious to surrounding changes or interferences.  Essentially, the findings above support the idea that psychopathy results in a failure to learn from ones mistakes due to an inability to integrate information.  Newman believes that the psychopathic frame of thought is very "local".

         Christian Keysers', Ph.D article Inside the Mind of a Psychopath-Empathetic But Not Always, published in The Empathetic Brian, the "low fear" hypothesis is supported.  This notion is based on the inference that a lack of empathy could explain why psychopathic offenders fail to feel bad when they hurt others. To test this, 21 convicted violent psychopathic offenders were scanned using fMRI while they watched violent movie clips.  The results, published in the journal Brain, indicated lower activation in motor, somatosensory and emotional brain regions. In essence, the results supported that there was in fact reduced. This may explain the ease with which they commit such horrible crimes.

         The findings of Newman and the findings described in the above article highlight different theories about the nature of psychopathy.  Despite the variations, they both agree that there is something different or possibly missing in the mind of a psychopath.