Brain Structural Correlates of Emotion Recognition in Psychopaths (original) (raw)
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Disrupted neural processing of emotional faces in psychopathy
2013
Psychopaths show a reduced ability to recognize emotion facial expressions, which may disturb the interpersonal relationship development and successful social adaptation. Behavioral hypotheses point toward an association between emotion recognition deficits in psychopathy and amygdala dysfunction. Our prediction was that amygdala dysfunction would combine deficient activation with disturbances in functional connectivity with cortical regions of the face-processing network. Twenty-two psychopaths and 22 control subjects were assessed and functional magnetic resonance maps were generated to identify both brain activation and task-induced functional connectivity using psychophysiological interaction analysis during an emotional face-matching task. Results showed significant amygdala activation in control subjects only, but differences between study groups did not reach statistical significance. In contrast, psychopaths showed significantly increased activation in visual and prefrontal areas, with this latest activation being associated with psychopaths affective-interpersonal disturbances. Psychophysiological interaction analyses revealed a reciprocal reduction in functional connectivity between the left amygdala and visual and prefrontal cortices. Our results suggest that emotional stimulation may evoke a relevant cortical response in psychopaths, but a disruption in the processing of emotional faces exists involving the reciprocal functional interaction between the amygdala and neocortex, consistent with the notion of a failure to integrate emotion into cognition in psychopathic individuals.
Neural processing of dynamic emotional facial expressions in psychopaths
Facial expressions play a critical role in social interactions by eliciting rapid responses in the observer. Failure to perceive and experience a normal range and depth of emotion seriously impact interpersonal communication and relationships. As has been demonstrated across a number of domains, abnormal emotion processing in individuals with psychopathy plays a key role in their lack of empathy. However, the neuroimaging literature is unclear as to whether deficits are specific to particular emotions such as fear and perhaps sadness. Moreover, findings are inconsistent across studies. In the current experiment, 80 incarcerated adult males scoring high, medium, and low on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning while viewing dynamic facial expressions of fear, sadness, happiness, and pain. Participants who scored high on the PCL-R showed a reduction in neuro-hemodynamic response to all four categories of facial expressions in the face processing network (inferior occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and superior temporal sulcus (STS)) as well as the extended network (inferior frontal gyrus and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)), which supports a pervasive deficit across emotion domains. Unexpectedly, the response in dorsal insula to fear, sadness, and pain was greater in psychopaths than non-psychopaths. Importantly, the orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), regions critically implicated in affective and motivated behaviors, were significantly less active in individuals with psychopathy during the perception of all four emotional expressions.
Background It has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have deficits in processing distress cues (e.g. fearful facial expressions). Aims Toinvestigate brain functionwhen individuals with psychopathy and a control group process facial emotion. Method Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging we compared six people scoring ≥25 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised and nine non-psychopathic healthy volunteers during an implicit emotion processing task using fearful, happy and neutral faces. Results The psychopathy group showed significantly less activation than the control group in fusiform and extrastriate cortices when processing both facial emotions. However, emotion type affected response pattern. Both groups increased fusiform and extrastriate cortex activation when processing happy faces compared with neutral faces, butthis increase was significantly smaller in the psychopathy group. In contrast, when processing fearful faces compared with neutral faces, the control group showed increased activation but the psychopathy group decreased activation in the fusiform gyrus. Conclusions People with psychopathy have biological differences from controls when processing facial emotion, and the pattern of response differs according to emotion type.
The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 2006
It has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have deficits in processing distress cues (e.g. fearful facial expressions). To investigate brain function when individuals with psychopathy and a control group process facial emotion. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging we compared six people scoring > or =25 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and nine non-psychopathic healthy volunteers during an implicit emotion processing task using fearful, happy and neutral faces. The psychopathy group showed significantly less activation than the control group in fusiform and extrastriate cortices when processing both facial emotions. However, emotion type affected response pattern. Both groups increased fusiform and extrastriate cortex activation when processing happy faces compared with neutral faces, but this increase was significantly smaller in the psychopathy group. In contrast, when processing fearful faces compared w...
Abnormalities in emotion processing within cortical and subcortical regions in criminal psychopaths
Biological Psychiatry, 2003
Background: Neurobiology of psychopathy is important for our understanding of current neuropsychiatric questions. Despite a growing interest in biological research in psychopathy, its neural underpinning remains obscure. Methods: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the influence of affective contents on brain activation in psychopaths. Series containing positive and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System were shown to six male psychopaths and six male control subjects while 100 whole-brain echo-planar-imaging measurements were acquired. Differences in brain activation were evaluated using BrainVoyager software 4.6. Results: In psychopaths, increased activation through negative contents was found right-sided in prefrontal regions and amygdala. Activation was reduced right-sided in the subgenual cingulate and the temporal gyrus, and left-sided in the dorsal cingulate and the parahippocampal gyrus. Increased activation through positive contents was found left-sided in the orbitofrontal regions. Activation was reduced in right medial frontal and medial temporal regions. Conclusions: These findings underline the hypotheses that psychopathy is neurobiologically reflected by dysregulation and disturbed functional connectivity of emotionrelated brain regions. These findings may be interpreted within a framework including prefrontal regions that provide top-down control to and regulate bottom-up signals from limbic areas. Because of the small sample size, the results of this study have to be regarded as preliminary.
Facial affect recognition in criminal psychopaths
Emotion, 2002
Prior studies provide consistent evidence of deficits for psychopaths in processing verbal emotional material but are inconsistent regarding nonverbal emotional material. To examine whether psychopaths exhibit general versus specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths identified with Hare's (R. D. Hare, 1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised were asked to complete a facial affect recognition test. Slides of prototypic facial expressions were presented. Three hypotheses regarding hemispheric lateralization anomalies in psychopaths were also tested (right-hemisphere dysfunction, reduced lateralization, and reversed lateralization). Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths at classifying facial affect under conditions promoting reliance on right-hemisphere resources and displayed a specific deficit in classifying disgust. These findings demonstrate that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing.
Cortex and amygdala morphology in psychopathy
Psychiatry Res, 2011
Psychopathy is characterized by abnormal emotional processes, but only recent neuroimaging studies have investigated its cerebral correlates. The study aim was to map local differences of cortical and amygdalar morphology. Cortical pattern matching and radial distance mapping techniques were used to analyze the magnetic resonance images of 26 violent male offenders (age: 32 ± 8) with psychopathy diagnosed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and no schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and in matched controls (age: 35 ± sp="0.12"/>11). The cortex displayed up to 20% reduction in the orbitofrontal and midline structures (corrected p b 0.001 bilaterally). Up to 30% tissue reduction in the basolateral nucleus, and 10-30% enlargement effects in the central and lateral nuclei indicated abnormal structure of the amygdala (corrected p = 0.05 on the right; and symmetrical pattern on the left). Psychopathy features specific morphology of the main cerebral structures involved in cognitive and emotional processing, consistent with clinical and functional data, and with a hypothesis of an alternative evolutionary brain development.
NeuroImage, 2008
Major advances have been made in the understanding of the neurobiology of psychopathy in the past years, yet the distribution and extent of neuroanatomical abnormalities underlying the disorder are still poorly known. It is also unclear if different dimensions of the construct of psychopathy (e.g., emotional callousness, antisocial behavior) correspond to structural abnormalities in distinct regions of the brain. We tested the following hypotheses: (1) psychopathy is related to grey matter reductions in regions of the brain that underlie moral conduct and (2) the severity of psychopathy is related to the degree of structural abnormalities. Optimized voxel-based morphometry and the screening version of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL: SV) were employed to investigate a matched sample of 15 community psychiatric patients with high PCL: SV scores, and 15 healthy normal volunteers. The analyses controlled for total grey matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes. Grey matter reductions were observed in the frontopolar, orbitofrontal and anterior temporal cortices, superior temporal sulcus region, and insula of the patients. The degree of structural abnormalities was significantly related to the interpersonal/affective dimension of psychopathy. The pattern of grey matter reductions in patients with high psychopathy scores comprised a distributed fronto-temporal network which plays a critical role in moral sensibility and behavior.
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2015
Research suggests psychopathy is associated with structural brain alterations that may contribute to the affective and interpersonal deficits frequently observed in individuals with high psychopathic traits. However, the regional alterations related to different components of psychopathy are still unclear. We used voxel-based morphometry to characterize the structural correlates of psychopathy in a sample of 35 healthy adults assessed with the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure. Furthermore, we examined the regional grey matter alterations associated with the components described by the triarchic model. Our results showed that, after accounting for variation in total intracranial volume, age and IQ, overall psychopathy was negatively associated with grey matter volume in the left putamen and amygdala. Additional regression analysis with anatomical ROIs revealed total triPM score was also associated with increased lateral OFC and caudate volume. Boldness was positively associated with vol...
Investigating the neural correlates of psychopathy: a critical review
Molecular Psychiatry, 2011
In recent years, an increasing number of neuroimaging studies have sought to identify the brain anomalies associated with psychopathy. The results of such studies could have significant implications for the clinical and legal management of psychopaths, as well as for neurobiological models of human social behavior. In this article, we provide a critical review of structural and functional neuroimaging studies of psychopathy. In particular, we emphasize the considerable variability in results across studies, and focus our discussion on three methodological issues that could contribute to the observed heterogeneity in study data: (1) the use of between-group analyses (psychopaths vs non-psychopaths) as well as correlational analyses (normal variation in 'psychopathic' traits), (2) discrepancies in the criteria used to classify subjects as psychopaths and (3) consideration of psychopathic subtypes. The available evidence suggests that each of these issues could have a substantial effect on the reliability of imaging data. We propose several strategies for resolving these methodological issues in future studies, with the goal of fostering further progress in the identification of the neural correlates of psychopathy.