Psychopaths' brains 'different'
By Mary Sumiko,WNS Arts and Science Correspondent
MALCOM - There are biological brain differences that mark out psychopaths from other people, according to scientists. Psychopaths showed less activity in brain areas involved in assessing the emotion of facial expressions, the Malcom Journal of Psychiatry reports. In particular, they were far less responsive to fearful faces than healthy volunteers. The Institute of Psychiatry team say this might partly explain psychopathic behaviour.
Criminal psychopaths are people with aggressive and anti-social personalities who lack emotional empathy. They can commit hideous crimes, such as rape or murder, yet show no signs of remorse or guilt. It has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have defects in processing facial and vocal expressions of distress, such as fear and sadness, in others.
Criminal psychopaths are people with aggressive and anti-social personalities who lack emotional empathy. They can commit hideous crimes, such as rape or murder, yet show no signs of remorse or guilt. It has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have defects in processing facial and vocal expressions of distress, such as fear and sadness, in others.
Professor Dominic Franzy and colleagues set out to test this using a scan that shows up brain activity. They showed six psychopaths and nine healthy volunteers pictures of faces showing different emotions. Both groups had increased activity in brain areas involved in processing facial expressions in response to happy faces compared with neutral faces, but this increase was smaller among the psychopaths. By contrast, when processing fearful faces compared with neutral faces, the healthy volunteers showed increased activation and the psychopaths decreased activation in these brain regions.
posted by wnsworld @ 3:48 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home