Neuroscientists using MRI scans discovered that psychopathic people have a 10% larger striatum, a cluster of neurons in the subcortical basal ganglia of the forebrain, than regular people.
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore used MRI scans to show that the striatum is approximately 10 percent larger in psychopathic individuals compared to people with no psychopathic traits.
As psychopathy is not an official mental health disorder, doctors cannot diagnose a person with the condition.
The most common instrument for diagnosing psychopathy is the PCL-instrument (the Psychopathic Checklist). This is the instrument that many clinical Page 5 3 psychologists and psychiatrists consider valid and reliable.
The study showed that psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety.
Karin Roelofs, at the Donders Institute at Radboud University in the Netherlands, confirmed that the brains of psychopaths showed poor connectivity between the amygdala — the brain region key for processing emotions, especially fear — and the more “judging,” wiser prefrontal cortex.
Psychopathy refers to the neurological and anti-social manifestations that occur in a person with an anti-social personality disorder. This disorder is primarily characterised by impairments to empathy and remorse, coupled with antisocial behaviour, in addition to disinhibition.
Although sociopathy and psychopathy cannot be diagnosed until someone is 18, one of the hallmarks of both conditions is that they usually begin in childhood or early adolescence. Usually, the symptoms appear before the age of 15, and sometimes they are present early in childhood.
Key traits
Some of the red flags that someone is a psychopath include a lack of empathy, a charming personality to fool others, disorganisation, a tendency to blame others, a lack of fear, and being cold-hearted. “Making a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy is rather hard, actually,” Erikson said.
Psychopaths are at least periodically aware of the effects of their behavior on others and can be genuinely saddened by their inability to control it. The lives of most psychopaths are devoid of a stable social network or warm, close bonds.
Psychopathic personality traits are transmitted from father-to-offspring due to genetic reasons.
• Mild psychopaths are less aggressive and more anxious and. guilt-ridden than severe ones. • Mild psychopathy has more benign course and better prognosis.
An intense fear of abandonment, separation, or rejection. Precarious yet intense relationships with “black and white” thinking – idealizing someone one moment and devaluing them the next. Fluctuating, unstable identity with inconsistent goals and values. Seeing the self as overly flawed or nonexistent.
brain scan by itself can be used for diagnosing a mental illness or to learn about a person's risk for disease. Researchers use brain scans to study brain development in healthy people and people with illnesses, disease progres sion, and the effects of medications or other treatments on the brain.
The PCL-R and related tests are sometimes referred to as “psychopath tests.” A score above a 30 on the PCL-R has sometimes been used to determine that someone is “a psychopath.” However, psychopathy is a spectrum trait, no matter what scale is used to measure it.
Thanks to Hollywood, we tend to think of psychopaths as knife-wielding criminals, but science shows some high-functioning psychopaths can actually be hard to spot. So hard, in fact, that some psychopaths don't know they meet the definition for the condition.
There are some areas where psychopaths may experience normal emotions and grief is one such area. In response to death of a person with whom there is a bond, some psychopaths can experience sadness and this may even bring about feelings of guilt which are otherwise impossible to feel. Crying may be a part of this.
While psychopaths show a specific lack in emotions, such as anxiety, fear and sadness, they can feel other emotions, such as happiness, joy, surprise and disgust, in a similar way as most of us would.
Clinical observations at ASH have suggested 4 possible subtypes of psychopathy: narcissistic, borderline, sadistic, and antisocial.
Most people mellow out with age, but in the case of psychopaths and those suffering from similar antisocial personality disorders such as sociopaths, bad behavior tends to get worse, according to new research from New Zealand's University of Otago.
Like healthy people, many psychopaths love their parents, spouse, children, and pets in their own way, but they have difficulty in loving and trusting the rest of the world.
Genetic Risk Factors
There is no such thing as a “psychopathy gene.” But research tells us that psychopathy tends to run in families. Even if a parent does NOT have psychopathy, they may carry one or more genetic variants that increases their child's chance of developing psychopathy.
Psychopaths are considered to have a severe form of antisocial personality disorder.
What is known and objective: Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by deficits in personality and behaviour. Personality deficits are marked by interpersonal and affective facets, including pathological lying, grandiose sense of self-worth, lack of remorse and callousness.
To sum up, given the above reviewed literature, we may conclude that individuals with psychopathic traits are found to have a deficit in dispositional empathy, particularly related to the processing of distress and negative arousal cues (i.e., affective empathy and affective ToM).