Emotion in the criminal psychopath: startle reflex modulation

Brain Basis of Psychopathy in Criminal Offenders and General Population

Psychopathy is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and egotistical traits. These traits vary also in normally functioning individuals. Here, we tested whether such antisocial personalities are associated with similar structural and neural alterations as those observed in criminal psychopathy. Subjects were 100 non-convicted well-functioning individuals, 19 violent male offenders, and 19 matched controls. Subjects underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and viewed movie clips with varying violent content during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Psychopathic traits were evaluated with Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (controls) and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (offenders). Psychopathic offenders had lower gray matter density (GMD) in orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula. In the community sample, affective psychopathy traits were associated with lower GMD in the same areas. Viewing violence increased brain activity in periaqueductal grey matter, thalamus, somatosensory, premotor, and temporal cortices. Psychopathic offenders had increased responses to violence in thalamus and orbitofrontal, insular, and cingulate cortices. In the community sample, impulsivity-related psychopathy traits were positively associated with violence-elicited responses in similar areas. We conclude that brain characteristics underlying psychopathic spectrum in violent psychopathy are related to those observed in well-functioning individuals with asocial personality features.

Patterns of Contagious Yawning and Itching Differ Amongst Adults With Autistic Traits vs. Psychopathic Traits

Both individuals with diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and individuals high in psychopathic traits show reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning; that is, yawning after seeing or hearing another person yawn. Yet it is unclear whether the same underlying processes (e.g., reduced eye gaze) are responsible for the relationship between reduced contagion and these very different types of clinical traits. College Students (n = 97) watched videos of individuals yawning or scratching (a form of contagion not reliant on eye gaze for transmission) while their eye movements were tracked. They completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), and the Adolescent and Adult Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist. Both psychopathic traits and autistic traits showed an inverse relationship to contagious yawning, consistent with previous research. However, the relationship between autistic (but not psychopathic) traits and contagious yawning was moderated by eye gaze. Furthermore, participants high in autistic traits showed typical levels of contagious itching whereas adults high in psychopathic traits showed diminished itch contagion. Finally, only psychopathic traits were associated with lower overall levels of empathy. The findings imply that the underlying processes contributing to the disruptions in contagious yawning amongst individuals high in autistic vs. psychopathic traits are distinct. In contrast to adults high in psychopathic traits, diminished contagion may appear amongst people with high levels of autistic traits secondary to diminished attention to the faces of others, and in the absence of a background deficit in emotional empathy.

Psychopathic traits, inhibition, and positive and negative emotion: Results from an emotional Go/No-Go task

Difficulty stopping unwanted or inappropriate actions (i.e., inhibitory control) is implicated in antisocial behaviors, which are common in people high in psychopathic traits. Recent research indicates that, for those with antisocial personality, inhibitory control is impaired under negative emotional contexts; however, it is unclear whether this impairment extends to persons with psychopathic traits and to impairments under positive emotional contexts. Identifying some of these distinctions can point to therapeutics that target negative emotion specifically or emotion dysregulation broadly. We sought to identify unique relationships between distinct facets of psychopathy and inhibitory control in the context of positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. Using a community sample (N = 117), event-related potentials were recorded during an emotional-linguistic Go/No-Go task. Results indicated distinct cognition-emotion relationships for each psychopathy facet. Higher interpersonal facet scores related to reciprocal interference between cognition and emotion. Higher callous affect facet scores related to reduced inhibitory and emotional processing, except when stimuli were most engaging (emotional No-Go trials). Higher erratic lifestyle facet scores related to increased effort required to process both emotion and inhibition cues. Finally, higher antisocial facet scores related to poorer behavioral inhibition overall. This research challenges the theoretical accounts of psychopathy focused on specific deficits in negative emotion, such as fearlessness, while offering some support for theories related to attentional dysfunction. Results also highlight the importance of facet-level theorizing, as results varied by facet. This study may inform efforts to reduce disinhibited behaviors, particularly in emotional contexts, among those high in certain psychopathic traits.

A Causal Role for Gastric Rhythm in Human Disgust Avoidance

Rotten food, maggots, bodily waste-all elicit disgust in humans. Disgust promotes survival by encouraging avoidance of disease vectors1 but is also implicated in prejudice toward minority groups; avoidance of environmentally beneficial foods, such as insect protein; and maladaptive avoidance behavior in neuropsychiatric conditions.2-5 Unlike fear, pathological disgust is not improved substantially by exposure therapy clinically,6 nor in experimental work does behavioral avoidance of disgusting images habituate following prolonged exposure.7,8 Under normal physiological conditions, perception of disgusting stimuli disrupts myoelectrical rhythms in the stomach,9-13 inducing gastric dysrhythmias that correlate with neural signatures of disgust.11 However, the causal role of gastric rhythm in disgust avoidance is unknown. We manipulated gastric rhythm using domperidone, a peripheral dopamine D2/D3 antagonist and common anti-emetic, at a dose (10 mg) that acts to convert gastric dysrhythmias to normal rhythms.9 In a preregistered, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design in 25 healthy volunteers (aged 18-25), we measured the effects of domperidone on core disgust avoidance, using eye tracking to measure implicit (oculomotor) avoidance of disgusting images (feces) before and after an "exposure" intervention (monetary reinforcement for looking at disgusting images).7,8 We find that domperidone significantly reduces oculomotor disgust avoidance following incentivized exposure. This suggests that domperidone may weaken the "immunity" of disgust to habituation, putatively by reducing gastric dysrhythmias during incentivized engagement with disgusting stimuli. This indicates a causal role for disgust-related visceral changes in disgust avoidance, supporting the hypothesis that physiological homeostasis contributes to emotional experience.

Adolescent Psychopathic Traits Negatively Relate to Hemodynamic Activity within the Basal Ganglia during Error-Related Processing

Youth with elevated psychopathic traits exhibit a number of comparable neurocognitive deficits as adult psychopathic offenders, including error-related processing deficits. Subregions of the basal ganglia play an important, though indirect, role in error-related processing through connections with cortical areas including the anterior cingulate cortex. A number of recent structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (s/fMRI) studies have associated basal ganglia dysfunction in youth with elevated psychopathic traits, but these studies have not examined whether dysfunction occurring within subregions of the basal ganglia help contribute to error-related processing deficits previously observed in such at-risk youth. Here, we investigated error-related processing using a response inhibition Go/NoGo fMRI experimental paradigm in a large sample of incarcerated male adolescent offenders (n = 182). In the current report, psychopathy scores (measured via the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV)) were negatively related to hemodynamic activity within input nuclei of the basal ganglia (i.e., the caudate and nucleus accumbens), as well as intrinsic/output nuclei (i.e., the globus pallidus and substantia nigra) and related nuclei (i.e., the subthalamic nucleus) during error-related processing. This is the first evidence to suggest that error-related dysfunction previously observed in youth with elevated psychopathic traits may be related to underlying abnormalities occurring within subregions of the basal ganglia.

Psychopathy is associated with shifts in the organization of neural networks in a large incarcerated male sample

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Psychopathy is linked to disruptions in neural information processing.

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Graph analysis revealed that psychopathy impacts neural network organization.

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Psychopathy is linked to a hyper-efficiently organized dorsal attention network.

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Subcortical structures are less central to neural communication in psychopathy.

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No psychopathy differences were found in default or salience network graph metrics.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined by antisocial behavior paired with callousness, low empathy, and low interpersonal emotions. Psychopathic individuals reliably display complex atypicalities in emotion and attention processing that are evident when examining task performance, activation within specific neural regions, and connections between regions. Recent advances in neuroimaging methods, namely graph analysis, attempt to unpack this type of processing complexity by evaluating the overall organization of neural networks. Graph analysis has been used to better understand neural functioning in several clinical disorders but has not yet been used in the study of psychopathy. The present study applies a minimum spanning tree graph analysis to resting-state fMRI data collected from male inmates assessed for psychopathy with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (n = 847). Minimum spanning tree analysis provides several metrics of neural organization optimality (i.e., the effectiveness, efficiency, and robustness of neural network organization). Results show that inmates higher in psychopathy exhibit a more efficiently organized dorsal attention network (β = =0.101, p_corrected = =0.018). Additionally, subcortical structures (e.g., amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus) act as less of a central hub in the global flow of information in inmates higher in psychopathy (β = =−0.104, p_corrected = =0.048). There were no significant effects of psychopathy on neural network organization in the default or salience networks. Together, these shifts in neural organization suggest that the brains of inmates higher in psychopathy are organized in a fundamentally different way than other individuals.

Do EEG and Startle Reflex Modulation Vary with Self-Reported Aggression in Response to Violent Images?

Increased violence and aggressive tendencies are a problem in much of the world and are often symptomatic of many other neurological and psychiatric conditions. Among clinicians, current methods of diagnosis of problem aggressive behaviour rely heavily on the use of self-report measures as described by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition (DSM-5) and International Classification of Diseases 10th revision (ICD-10). This approach does not place adequate emphasis on objective measures that are potentially sensitive to processes not feeding into subjective self-report. Numerous studies provide evidence that attitudes and affective content can be processed without leading to verbalised output. This exploratory study aimed to determine whether individuals in the normal population, grouped by self-reported aggression, differed in subjective versus objective affective processing. Participants (N = 52) were grouped based on their responses to the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory. They were then presented with affect-inducing images while brain event-related potentials (ERPs) and startle reflex modulation (SRM) were recorded to determine non-language-based processes. Explicit valence and arousal ratings for each image were taken to determine subjective affective effects. Results indicated no significant group differences for explicit ratings and SRM. However, ERP results demonstrated significant group differences between the 'pleasant' and 'violent' emotion condition in the frontal, central and parietal areas across both hemispheres. These findings suggest that parts of the brain process affective stimuli different to what conscious appraisal comes up with in participants varying in self-reported aggression.

The Role of Callous-Unemotional Traits on Adolescent Positive and Negative Emotional Reactivity: A Longitudinal Community-Based Study

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with lower emotional reactivity in adolescents. However, since previous studies have focused mainly on reactivity to negative stimuli, it is unclear whether reactivity to positive stimuli is also affected. Further, few studies have addressed the link between CU traits and emotional reactivity in longitudinal community samples, which is important for determining its generalizability and developmental course. In the current study, pupil dilation and self-ratings of arousal and valence were assessed in 100 adolescents (15-17 years) from a community sample, while viewing images with negative and positive valence from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS). Behavioral traits (CU) were assessed concurrently, as well as at ages 12-15, and 8-9 (subsample, n = 68, low levels of prosocial behavior were used as a proxy for CU traits). The results demonstrate that CU traits assessed at ages 12-15 and 8-9 predicted less pupil dilation to both positive and negative images at ages 15-17. Further, CU traits at ages 12-15 and concurrently were associated with less negative valence ratings for negative images and concurrently to less positive valence ratings for positive images. The current findings demonstrate that CU traits are related to lower emotional reactivity to both negative and positive stimuli in adolescents from a community sample.

The effect of psychopathy on cooperative strategies in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma experiment with emotional feedback

As decision-making research becomes more popular, the inclusion of personality traits has emerged as a focal point for an exhaustive analysis of human behaviour. In this study, we investigate the impact of psychopathic traits on cooperation in an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game with emotional facial feedback. Firstly, we observed how receiving a facial feedback after each decision affected players with different psychopathic trait scores, and how being informed about the opponent’s identity influenced cooperative behaviour. Secondly, we analysed the strategies adopted by each player, and how these choices were correlated with their psychopathic traits. Although our results showed no effect of different emotional content in the feedback on cooperation, we observed more cooperative behaviours in those players who were told their opponent was another fellow human, compared to those who were told it was a computer. Moreover, fearless dominance had a very small but consistent negative effect on overall cooperation and on the tendency to maintain cooperative behaviours. We also found that players’ personality scores affected the strategies they chose to play throughout the game. Hence, our experiment adds complexity to the body of work investigating psychopathic traits and social interactions, considering not only the environment of facial feedback but also the role of deception in experimental games.

Emotional modulation of the pupil response in psychopathy

Psychopathy is a form of personality disorder associated with a deficit in emotional processing. However, there is debate whether this deficit applies to all emotions or exists only for negative emotions. The pupil dilates rapidly in response to emotional stimuli, allowing a time-sensitive index of emotional processing. Across 3 experiments using (a) visual images of real-world scenes, (b) auditory sound clips, and (c) videos of dynamic facial expressions, we measured emotional modulation of the pupil response to both negative and positive stimuli. Participants were 82 male mentally disordered offenders. Psychopathy was measured using the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised to produce factor scores of interpersonal–affective traits (Factor 1) and lifestyle–antisocial traits (Factor 2). Participants with high Factor 1 scores showed reduced emotional modulation of the pupil response to negative images and angry faces but not to any of the positive stimuli. These effects only occurred shortly after the emotion was presented (<2,000 ms), suggesting delayed processing of negative affective stimuli in Factor 1 psychopathy. Factor 2 scores were not associated with any changes in pupil response. There were no effects of psychopathy on the pupil response to the affective sound clips. The results support a specific psychopathic deficit in the processing of negative stimuli related to the interpersonal–affective dimension of psychopathy. We argue that pupillometry is a powerful and noninvasive tool to investigate emotional processing in clinical populations.

Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action

Empathy enables people to vicariously experience the other’s pain. At the same time, the focus of empathy can be narrow and reserved for a limited number of people. In sacrificial dilemmas, non-empathic people are more likely to sacrifice one person for greater good. However, no study has investigated the role of diminished empathic concern for the victim in utilitarian choices of action. In two studies, we investigated how empathy actually experienced in sacrificial dilemmas affects a decision to perform a harmful action onto the victim. In Study 1 (N = 275), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they were feeling two divergent tropes of affective empathy: other-oriented empathy (empathic concern) and self-oriented empathy (personal distress). Results showed that lower levels of other-focused empathy for the victim predicted utilitarian choices of action. In Study 2 (N = 170), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they empathized with the victim and the saved. We also assessed dispositional empathy and psychopathy to test a hypothesis that psychopathy mediates the relationship between lower empathy for the victim and utilitarian choices of action. Results supported this hypothesis, whereas dispositional empathy was not significantly correlated with utilitarian choices of action. Overall, lower empathy experienced in the dilemma situation was associated with utilitarian choices of action, and this was specific to reduced empathic concern for the victim. People choose to pursue the utilitarian end that accompanies harm onto the other as a mean when the victim is out of their empathic focus.

Primary and Secondary Variants of Psychopathy in a Volunteer Sample Are Associated With Different Neurocognitive Mechanisms

BACKGROUND

Recent work has indicated that there at least two distinct subtypes of psychopathy. Primary psychopathy is characterized by low anxiety and thought to result from a genetic predisposition, whereas secondary psychopathy is characterized by high anxiety and thought to develop in response to environmental adversity. Primary psychopathy is robustly associated with reduced neural activation to others' emotions and, in particular, distress. However, it has been proposed that the secondary presentation has different neurocognitive correlates.

METHODS

Primary (n = 50), secondary (n = 100), and comparison (n = 82) groups were drawn from a large volunteer sample (N = 1444) using a quartile-split approach across psychopathic trait (affective-interpersonal) and anxiety measures. Participants performed a widely utilized emotional face processing task during functional magnetic resonance imaging.

RESULTS

The primary group showed reduced amygdala and insula activity in response to fear. The secondary group did not differ from the comparison group in these regions. Instead, the secondary group showed reduced activity compared with the comparison group in other areas, including the superior temporal sulcus/inferior parietal lobe, thalamus, pallidum, and substantia nigra. Both psychopathy groups also showed reduced activity in response to fear in the anterior cingulate cortex. During anger processing, the secondary group exhibited reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex compared with the primary group.

CONCLUSIONS

Distinct neural correlates of fear processing characterize individuals with primary and secondary psychopathy. The reduced neural response to fear that characterizes individuals with the primary variant of psychopathic traits is not observed in individuals with the secondary presentation. The neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning secondary psychopathy warrant further systematic investigation.

Selective Fair Behavior as a Function of Psychopathic Traits in a Subclinical Population

Psychopathy is a group of personality traits that are associated with violations of social norms. Previous studies have suggested that people with psychopathic traits in subclinical populations do not necessarily display antisocial, self-defeating behaviors, and instead may strategically show adaptive behaviors in response to cues during reciprocal social interactions. Therefore, in the present study, we examined whether the association between psychopathic traits and unfair behavior can be moderated by a potential for punishment and social distance (anonymity), which are known to facilitate fair behavior. We focused on two psychopathic traits: primary and secondary psychopathy. Primary psychopathy is characterized by callousness, shallow affect, manipulation, and superficial charm. In contrast, secondary psychopathy is associated with impulsivity and lack of long-term goals, and is related to hostile behavior. A total of 348 undergraduate students determined the amounts of money that they would offer to strangers or friends at their university in hypothetical scenarios of the ultimatum game (UG) and the dictator game (DG). While gender affected decisions in the hypothetical scenarios of the DG, it did not interact with psychopathic traits. The score for primary psychopathy on the Levenson self-report psychopathy scale predicted unfair monetary offers to strangers in the DG, where participants could not be punished. However, compared with their offers in the DG, individuals with higher scores for primary psychopathy made larger offers in the UG, where low offers could trigger punishment from the recipient. Moreover, primary psychopathy did not decrease the amounts of offers in either game when the participant considered the recipient to be a friend. On the other hand, secondary psychopathy was not associated with differences in behavioral fairness depending on a potential for punishment or social distance. Based on these findings, we discuss strategic social skills as a function of primary psychopathy.

Differentiating emotional processing and attention in psychopathy with functional neuroimaging

Individuals with psychopathy are often characterized by emotional processing deficits, and recent research has examined the specific contexts and cognitive mechanisms that underlie these abnormalities. Some evidence suggests that abnormal features of attention are fundamental to emotional deficits in persons with psychopathy, but few studies have demonstrated the neural underpinnings responsible for such effects. Here, we use functional neuroimaging to examine attention-emotion interactions among incarcerated individuals (n = 120) evaluated for psychopathic traits using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Using a task designed to manipulate attention to emotional features of visual stimuli, we demonstrate effects representing implicit emotional processing, explicit emotional processing, attention-facilitated emotional processing, and vigilance for emotional content. Results confirm the importance of considering mechanisms of attention when evaluating emotional processing differences related to psychopathic traits. The affective-interpersonal features of psychopathy (PCL-R Factor 1) were associated with relatively lower emotion-dependent augmentation of activity in visual processing areas during implicit emotional processing, while antisocial-lifestyle features (PCL-R Factor 2) were associated with elevated activity in the amygdala and related salience network regions. During explicit emotional processing, psychopathic traits were associated with upregulation in the medial prefrontal cortex, insula, and superior frontal regions. Isolating the impact of explicit attention to emotional content, only Factor 1 was related to upregulation of activity in the visual processing stream, which was accompanied by increased activity in the angular gyrus. These effects highlight some important mechanisms underlying abnormal features of attention and emotional processing that accompany psychopathic traits.

As Far as the Eye Can See: Relationship between Psychopathic Traits and Pupil Response to Affective Stimuli

Psychopathic individuals show a range of affective processing deficits, typically associated with the interpersonal/affective component of psychopathy. However, previous research has been inconsistent as to whether psychopathy, within both offender and community populations, is associated with deficient autonomic responses to the simple presentation of affective stimuli. Changes in pupil diameter occur in response to emotionally arousing stimuli and can be used as an objective indicator of physiological reactivity to emotion. This study used pupillometry to explore whether psychopathic traits within a community sample were associated with hypo-responsivity to the affective content of stimuli. Pupil activity was recorded for 102 adult (52 female) community participants in response to affective (both negative and positive affect) and affectively neutral stimuli, that included images of scenes, static facial expressions, dynamic facial expressions and sound-clips. Psychopathic traits were measured using the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure. Pupil diameter was larger in response to negative stimuli, but comparable pupil size was demonstrated across pleasant and neutral stimuli. A linear relationship between subjective arousal and pupil diameter was found in response to sound-clips, but was not evident in response to scenes. Contrary to predictions, psychopathy was unrelated to emotional modulation of pupil diameter across all stimuli. The findings were the same when participant gender was considered. This suggests that psychopathy within a community sample is not associated with autonomic hypo-responsivity to affective stimuli, and this effect is discussed in relation to later defensive/appetitive mobilisation deficits.

Heritability of startle reactivity and affect modified startle

Startle reflex and affect-modified startle reflex are used as indicators of defensive reactivity and emotional processing, respectively. The present study investigated the heritability of both the startle blink reflex and affect modification of this reflex in a community sample of 772 twins ages 14-15years old. Subjects were shown affective picture slides falling in three valence categories: negative, positive and neutral; crossed with two arousal categories: high arousal and low arousal. Some of these slides were accompanied with a loud startling noise. Results suggested sex differences in mean levels of startle reflex as well as in proportions of variance explained by genetic and environmental factors. Females had higher mean startle blink amplitudes for each valence-arousal slide category, indicating greater baseline defensive reactivity compared to males. Startle blink reflex in males was significantly heritable (49%), whereas in females, variance was explained primarily by shared environmental factors (53%) and non-shared environmental factors (41%). Heritability of affect modified startle (AMS) was found to be negligible in both males and females. These results suggest sex differences in the etiology of startle reactivity, while questioning the utility of the startle paradigm for understanding the genetic basis of emotional processing.

Dysfunctional error-related processing in female psychopathy

Neurocognitive studies of psychopathy have predominantly focused on male samples. Studies have shown that female psychopaths exhibit similar affective deficits as their male counterparts, but results are less consistent across cognitive domains including response modulation. As such, there may be potential gender differences in error-related processing in psychopathic personality. Here we investigate response-locked event-related potential (ERP) components [the error-related negativity (ERN/Ne) related to early error-detection processes and the error-related positivity (Pe) involved in later post-error processing] in a sample of incarcerated adult female offenders (n = 121) who performed a response inhibition Go/NoGo task. Psychopathy was assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). The ERN/Ne and Pe were analyzed with classic windowed ERP components and principal component analysis (PCA). Consistent with previous research performed in psychopathic males, female psychopaths exhibited specific deficiencies in the neural correlates of post-error processing (as indexed by reduced Pe amplitude) but not in error monitoring (as indexed by intact ERN/Ne amplitude). Specifically, psychopathic traits reflecting interpersonal and affective dysfunction remained significant predictors of both time-domain and PCA measures reflecting reduced Pe mean amplitude. This is the first evidence to suggest that incarcerated female psychopaths exhibit similar dysfunctional post-error processing as male psychopaths.

Neural responses to others' pain vary with psychopathic traits in healthy adult males

Disrupted empathic processing is a core feature of psychopathy. Neuroimaging data have suggested that individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits show atypical responses to others’ pain in a network of brain regions typically recruited during empathic processing (anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, and mid- and anterior cingulate cortex). Here, we investigated whether neural responses to others’ pain vary with psychopathic traits within the general population in a similar manner to that found in individuals at the extreme end of the continuum. As predicted, variation in psychopathic traits was associated with variation in neural responses to others’ pain in the network of brain regions typically engaged during empathic processing. Consistent with previous research, our findings indicated the presence of suppressor effects in the association of levels of the affective-interpersonal and lifestyle-antisocial dimensions of psychopathy with neural responses to others’ pain. That is, after controlling for the influence of the other dimension, higher affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits were associated with reduced neural responses to others’ pain, whilst higher lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were associated with increased neural responses to others’ pain. Our findings provide further evidence that atypical function in this network might represent neural markers of disrupted emotional and empathic processing; that the two dimensions of psychopathy might tap into distinct underlying vulnerabilities; and, most importantly, that the relationships observed at the extreme end of the psychopathy spectrum apply to the nonclinical distribution of these traits, providing further evidence for continuities in the mechanisms underlying psychopathic traits across the general population.

Modulation of Prepulse Inhibition and Startle Reflex by Emotions: A Comparison between Young and Older Adults

This study examined whether or not the acoustic startle response and sensorimotor gating may be modulated by emotions differentially between young and older adults. Two groups of participants (mean age Young: 24 years old; Elderly: 63.6 years old) were presented with three types of auditory stimuli (Startle alone, High or Low frequency Prepulse) while viewing pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant images. Electromyographic activity of the eyeblink response was measured. Results show that older adults displayed diminished eyeblink responses whereas younger adults displayed enhanced eyeblink responses when viewing negative images. Sensorimotor gating also differed between young and older adults, with enhanced sensorimotor gating abilities while viewing positive pictures in older adults and diminished abilities while viewing negative pictures among younger adults. These results argue in favor of a differential emotional influence on the sensorimotor abilities of young and older adults, with a positivity bias among the latter.

Are fearless dominance traits superfluous in operationalizing psychopathy? Incremental validity and sex differences

Researchers are vigorously debating whether psychopathic personality includes seemingly adaptive traits, especially social and physical boldness. In a large sample (N = 1,565) of adult offenders, we examined the incremental validity of 2 operationalizations of boldness (Fearless Dominance traits in the Psychopathy Personality Inventory [Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996]; Boldness traits in the triarchic model of psychopathy [Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009]), above and beyond other characteristics of psychopathy, in statistically predicting scores on 4 psychopathy-related measures, including the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). The incremental validity added by boldness traits in predicting the PCL-R's representation of psychopathy was especially pronounced for interpersonal traits (e.g., superficial charm, deceitfulness). Our analyses, however, revealed unexpected sex differences in the relevance of these traits to psychopathy, with boldness traits exhibiting reduced importance for psychopathy in women. We discuss the implications of these findings for measurement models of psychopathy. (PsycINFO Database Record

Altered resting-state functional connectivity in cortical networks in psychopathy

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by callous antisocial behavior and criminal recidivism. Here we examine whether psychopathy is associated with alterations in functional connectivity in three large-scale cortical networks. Using fMRI in 142 adult male prison inmates, we computed resting-state functional connectivity using seeds from the default mode network, frontoparietal network, and cingulo-opercular network. To determine the specificity of our findings to these cortical networks, we also calculated functional connectivity using seeds from two comparison primary sensory networks: visual and auditory networks. Regression analyses related network connectivity to overall psychopathy scores and to subscores for the "factors" and "facets" of psychopathy: Factor 1, interpersonal/affective traits; Factor 2, lifestyle/antisocial traits; Facet 1, interpersonal; Facet 2, affective; Facet 3, lifestyle; Facet 4, antisocial. Overall psychopathy severity was associated with reduced functional connectivity between lateral parietal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. The two factor scores exhibited contrasting relationships with functional connectivity: Factor 1 scores were associated with reduced functional connectivity in the three cortical networks, whereas Factor 2 scores were associated with heightened connectivity in the same networks. This dissociation was evident particularly in the functional connectivity between anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. The facet scores also demonstrated distinct patterns of connectivity. We found no associations between psychopathy scores and functional connectivity within visual or auditory networks. These findings provide novel evidence on the neural correlates of psychopathy and suggest that connectivity between cortical association hubs, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, may be a neurobiological marker of the disorder.

Impact of Psychopathy on Moral Judgments about Causing Fear and Physical Harm

Psychopathy is a personality variable associated with persistent immoral behaviors. Despite this, attempts to link moral reasoning deficits to psychopathic traits have yielded mixed results with many findings supporting intact moral reasoning in individuals with psychopathic traits. Abundant evidence shows that psychopathy impairs responses to others’ emotional distress. However, most studies of morality and psychopathy focus on judgments about causing others physical harm. Results of such studies may be inconsistent because physical harm is an imperfect proxy for emotional distress. No previous paradigm has explicitly separated judgments about physical harm and emotional distress and assessed how psychopathy affects each type of judgment. In three studies we found that psychopathy impairs judgments about causing others emotional distress (specifically fear) but minimally affects judgments about causing physical harm and that judgments about causing fear predict instrumental aggression in psychopathy. These findings are consistent with reports linking psychopathy to insensitivity to others’ fear, and suggest that sensitivity to others’ fear may play a fundamental role in the types of moral decision-making impaired by psychopathy.

Serotonin 1B Receptor Gene (HTR1B) Methylation as a Risk Factor for Callous-Unemotional Traits in Antisocial Boys

The serotonin system is thought to play a role in the aetiology of callous-unemotional (CU) traits in children. Previous research identified a functional single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) from the promoter region of the serotonin 1B receptor gene as being associated with CU traits in boys with antisocial behaviour problems. This research tested the hypothesis that CU traits are associated with reduced methylation of the promoter region of the serotonin 1B receptor gene due to the influence of methylation on gene expression. Participants (N = 117) were boys with antisocial behaviour problems aged 3-16 years referred to University of New South Wales Child Behaviour Research Clinics. Participants volunteered a saliva sample from which the genotype of a SNP from the promoter region of the serotonin 1B receptor gene and the methylation levels of 30 CpG sites from 3 CpG regions surrounding the location of this polymorphism were assayed. Lower levels of serotonin 1B receptor gene methylation were associated with higher levels of CU traits. This relationship, however, was found to be moderated by genotype and carried exclusively by two CpG sites for which levels of methylation were negatively associated with overall methylation levels in this region of the gene. Results provide support to the emerging literature that argues for a genetically-driven system-wide alteration in serotonin function in the aetiology of CU traits. Furthermore, the results suggest that there may be two pathways to CU traits that involve methylation of the serotonin 1B receptor gene; one that is driven by a genotypic risk and another that is associated with risk for generally increased levels of methylation. Future research that aims to replicate and further investigate these results is required.

Amygdala reactivity and negative emotionality: divergent correlates of antisocial personality and psychopathy traits in a community sample

Previous studies have emphasized that antisocial personality disorder (APD) and psychopathy overlap highly but differ critically in several features, notably negative emotionality (NEM) and possibly amygdala reactivity to social signals of threat and distress. Here we examined whether dimensions of psychopathy and APD correlate differentially with NEM and amygdala reactivity to emotional faces. Testing these relationships among healthy individuals, dimensions of psychopathy and APD were generated by the profile matching technique of Lynam and Widiger (2001), using facet scales of the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised, and amygdala reactivity was measured using a well-established emotional faces task, in a community sample of 103 men and women. Higher psychopathy scores were associated with lower NEM and lower amygdala reactivity, whereas higher APD scores were related to greater NEM and greater amygdala reactivity, but only after overlapping variance in APD and psychopathy was adjusted for in the statistical model. Amygdala reactivity did not mediate the relationship of APD and psychopathy scores to NEM. Supplemental analyses also compared other measures of factors within psychopathy in predicting NEM and amygdala reactivity and found that Factor 2 psychopathy was positively related to NEM and amygdala reactivity across measures of psychopathy. The overall findings replicate seminal observations on NEM in psychopathy by Hicks and Patrick (2006) and extend this work to neuroimaging in a normative population. They also suggest that one critical way in which APD and psychopathy dimensions may differ in their etiology is through their opposing levels of NEM and amygdala reactivity to threat.

Factors of psychopathy and electrocortical response to emotional pictures: Further evidence for a two-process theory

The Two-Process theory of psychopathy posits that distinct etiological mechanisms contribute to the condition: (a) a weakness in defensive (fear) reactivity related to affective-interpersonal features, and (b) impaired cognitive-executive functioning, marked by reductions in brain responses such as P3, related to impulsive-antisocial features. The current study examined relations between psychopathy factors and electrocortical response to emotional and neutral pictures in male offenders (N = 139) assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Impulsive-antisocial features of the PCL-R (Factor 2) were associated with reduced amplitude of earlier P3 brain response to pictures regardless of valence, whereas the affective-interpersonal dimension (Factor 1) was associated specifically with reductions in late positive potential response to aversive pictures. Findings provide further support for the Two-Process theory and add to a growing body of evidence linking the impulsive-antisocial facet of psychopathy to the broader construct of externalizing proneness. Findings are discussed in terms of current initiatives directed at incorporating neuroscientific concepts into psychopathology classification. (PsycINFO Database Record

Heritability and molecular genetic basis of acoustic startle eye blink and affectively modulated startle response: a genome-wide association study

Acoustic startle responses have been studied extensively in relation to individual differences and psychopathology. We examined three indices of the blink response in a picture-viewing paradigm-overall startle magnitude across all picture types, and aversive and pleasant modulation scores-in 3,323 twins and parents. Biometric models and molecular genetic analyses showed that half the variance in overall startle was due to additive genetic effects. No single nucleotide polymorphism was genome-wide significant, but GRIK3 produced a significant effect when examined as part of a candidate gene set. In contrast, emotion modulation scores showed little evidence of heritability in either biometric or molecular genetic analyses. However, in a genome-wide scan, PARP14 produced a significant effect for aversive modulation. We conclude that, although overall startle retains potential as an endophenotype, emotion-modulated startle does not.

Aversive startle potentiation and fear pathology: Mediating role of threat sensitivity and moderating impact of depression

Enhanced startle reactivity during exposure to unpleasant cues (aversive startle potentiation; ASP) appears in the RDoC matrix as a physiological index of acute threat response. Increased ASP has been linked to focal fear disorders and to scale measures of dispositional fearfulness (i.e., threat sensitivity; THT+). However, some studies have reported reduced ASP for fear pathology accompanied by major depressive disorder (MDD) or pervasive distress. The current study evaluated whether (a) THT+ as indexed by reported dispositional fearfulness mediates the relationship between fear disorders (when unaccompanied by depression) and ASP, and (b) depression moderates relations of THT+ and fear disorders with ASP. Fear disorder participants without MDD showed enhanced ASP whereas those with MDD (or other distress conditions) showed evidence of reduced ASP. Continuous THT+ scores also predicted ASP, and this association: (a) was likewise moderated by depression/distress, and (b) accounted for the relationship between ASP and fear pathology without MDD. These findings point to a role for the RDoC construct of acute threat, operationalized dispositionally, in enhanced ASP shown by individuals with fear pathology unaccompanied by distress pathology.

Neural correlates of moral and non-moral emotion in female psychopathy

This study presents the first neuroimaging investigation of female psychopathy in an incarcerated population. Prior studies have found that male psychopathy is associated with reduced limbic and paralimbic activation when processing emotional stimuli and making moral judgments. The goal of this study was to investigate whether these findings extend to female psychopathy. During fMRI scanning, 157 incarcerated and 46 non-incarcerated female participants viewed unpleasant pictures, half which depicted moral transgressions, and neutral pictures. Participants rated each picture on moral transgression severity. Psychopathy was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) in all incarcerated participants. Non-incarcerated participants were included as a control group to derive brain regions of interest associated with viewing unpleasant vs. neutral pictures (emotion contrast), and unpleasant pictures depicting moral transgressions vs. unpleasant pictures without moral transgressions (moral contrast). Regression analyses in the incarcerated group examined the association between PCL-R scores and brain activation in the emotion and moral contrasts. Results of the emotion contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate. Results of the moral contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right temporo-parietal junction. These results indicate that female psychopathy, like male psychopathy, is characterized by reduced limbic activation during emotion processing. In contrast, reduced temporo-parietal activation to moral transgressions has been less observed in male psychopathy. These results extend prior findings in male psychopathy to female psychopathy, and reveal aberrant neural responses to morally-salient stimuli that may be unique to female psychopathy.

Fear and decision-making in narcissistic personality disorder-a link between psychoanalysis and neuroscience

Linking psychoanalytic studies with neuroscience has proven increasingly productive for identifying and understanding personality functioning. This article focuses on pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), with the aim of exploring two clinically relevant aspects of narcissistic functioning also recognized in psychoanalysis: fear and decision-making. Evidence from neuroscientific studies of related conditions, such as psychopathy, suggests links between affective and cognitive functioning that can influence the sense of self-agency and narcissistic self-regulation. Attention can play a crucial role in moderating fear and self-regulatory deficits, and the interaction between experience and emotion can be central for decision-making. In this review we will explore fear as a motivating factor in narcissistic personality functioning, and the impact fear may have on decision-making in people with pathological narcissism and NPD. Understanding the processes and neurological underpinnings of fear and decision-making can potentially influence both the diagnosis and treatment of NPD.

Disrupted neural processing of emotional faces in psychopathy

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.

Cerebral lateralization of pro- and anti-social tendencies

Mounting evidence suggest that the right-hemisphere (RH) has a relative advantage, over the left-hemisphere (LH), in mediating social intelligence - identifying social stimuli, understanding the intentions of other people, awareness of the dynamics in social relationships, and successful handling of social interactions. Furthermore, a review and synthesis of the literature suggest that pro-social attitudes and behaviors are associated with physiological activity in the RH, whereas unsocial and anti-social tendencies are mediated primarily by the LH. This hemispheric asymmetry is rooted in several neurobiological and functional differences between the two hemispheres. (I) Positive social interactions often require inhibiting one's immediate desires and considering the perspectives and needs of others. Given that self-control is mediated by the RH, pro-social emotions and behaviors are, therefore, inherently associated with the RH as it subserves the brain's self-restraint mechanisms. (II) The RH mediates experiences of vulnerability. It registers the relative clumsiness and motor weakness of the left limbs, and it is involved, more than the LH, in processing threats and mediating fear. Emotional states of vulnerability trigger the need for affiliation and sociality, therefore the RH has a greater role in mediating pro-social attitudes and behaviors. (III) The RH mediates a holistic mode of representing the world. Holistic perception emphasizes similarities rather than differences, takes a long-term perspective, is associated with divergent thinking and seeing other points-of-view, and it mediates a personal mode of relating to people. All these features of holistic perception facilitate a more empathetic attitude toward others and pro-social behaviors.

Psychopathy-related traits and the use of reward and social information: a computational approach

Psychopathy is often linked to disturbed reinforcement-guided adaptation of behavior in both clinical and non-clinical populations. Recent work suggests that these disturbances might be due to a deficit in actively using information to guide changes in behavior. However, how much information is actually used to guide behavior is difficult to observe directly. Therefore, we used a computational model to estimate the use of information during learning. Thirty-six female subjects were recruited based on their total scores on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI), a self-report psychopathy list, and performed a task involving simultaneous learning of reward-based and social information. A Bayesian reinforcement-learning model was used to parameterize the use of each source of information during learning. Subsequently, we used the subscales of the PPI to assess psychopathy-related traits, and the traits that were strongly related to the model's parameters were isolated through a formal variable selection procedure. Finally, we assessed how these covaried with model parameters. We succeeded in isolating key personality traits believed to be relevant for psychopathy that can be related to model-based descriptions of subject behavior. Use of reward-history information was negatively related to levels of trait anxiety and fearlessness, whereas use of social advice decreased as the perceived ability to manipulate others and lack of anxiety increased. These results corroborate previous findings suggesting that sub-optimal use of different types of information might be implicated in psychopathy. They also further highlight the importance of considering the potential of computational modeling to understand the role of latent variables, such as the weight people give to various sources of information during goal-directed behavior, when conducting research on psychopathy-related traits and in the field of forensic psychiatry.

Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy as a function of interpersonal and affective disturbances

The diminished fear reactivity is one of the most valid physiological findings in psychopathy research. In a fear conditioning paradigm, with faces as conditioned stimulus (CS) and electric shock as unconditioned stimulus (US), we investigated a sample of 14 high psychopathic violent offenders. Event related potentials, skin conductance responses (SCR) as well as subjective ratings of the CSs were collected. This study assessed to which extent the different facets of the psychopathy construct contribute to the fear conditioning deficits observed in psychopaths. Participants with high scores on the affective facet subscale of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) showed weaker conditioned fear responses and lower N100 amplitudes compared to low scorers. In contrast, high scorers on the affective facet rated the CS+ (paired) more negatively than low scorers regarding the CS- (unpaired). Regarding the P300, high scores on the interpersonal facet were associated with increased amplitudes to the CS+ compared to the CS-, while the opposed pattern was found for the antisocial facet. Both, the initial and terminal contingent negative variation indicated a divergent pattern: participants with pronounced interpersonal deficits, showed increased cortical negativity to the CS+ compared to the CS-, whereas a reversed CS+/CS- differentiation was found in offenders scoring high on the antisocial facet. The present study revealed that deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy was most pronounced in offenders with high scores on the affective facet. Event related potentials suggest that participants with distinct interpersonal deficits showed increased information processing, whereas the antisocial facet was linked to decreased attention and interest to the CS+. These data indicate that an approach to the facets of psychopathy can help to resolve ambiguous findings in psychopathy research and enables a more precise and useful description of this disorder.

Subcomponents of psychopathy have opposing correlations with punishment judgments

Psychopathy research is plagued by an enigma: Psychopaths reliably act immorally, but they also accurately report whether an action is morally wrong. The current study revealed that cooperative suppressor effects and conflicting subsets of personality traits within the construct of psychopathy might help explain this conundrum. Among a sample of adult male offenders (N = 100) who ranked deserved punishment of crimes, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) total scores were not linearly correlated with deserved punishment task performance. However, these null results masked significant opposing associations between task performance and factors of psychopathy: the PCL-R Interpersonal/Affective (i.e., manipulative and callous) factor was positively associated with task performance, while the PCL-R Social Deviance (i.e., impulsive and antisocial) factor was simultaneously negatively associated with task performance. These relationships were qualified by a significant interaction where the Interpersonal/Affective traits were positively associated with task performance when Social Deviance traits were high, but Social Deviance traits were negatively associated with task performance when Interpersonal/Affective traits were low. This interaction helped reveal a significant nonlinear relationship between PCL-R total scores and task performance such that individuals with very low or very high PCL-R total scores performed better than those with middle-range PCL-R total scores. These results may explain the enigma of why individuals with very high psychopathic traits, but not other groups of antisocial individuals, usually have normal moral judgment in laboratory settings, but still behave immorally, especially in contexts where social deviance traits have strong influence.

What can we learn about emotion by studying psychopathy?

Psychopathy is a developmental disorder associated with core affective traits, such as low empathy, guilt, and remorse, and with antisocial and aggressive behaviors. Recent neurocognitive and neuroimaging studies of psychopathy in both institutionalized and community samples have begun to illuminate the basis of this condition, in particular the ways that psychopathy affects the experience and recognition of fear. In this review, I will consider how understanding emotional processes in psychopathy can shed light on the three questions central to the study of emotion: (1) Are emotions discrete, qualitatively distinct phenomena, or quantitatively varying phenomena best described in terms of dimensions like arousal and valence? (2) What are the brain structures involved in generating specific emotions like fear, if any? And (3) how do our own experiences of emotion pertain to our perceptions of and responses to others' emotion? I conclude that insights afforded by the study of psychopathy may provide better understanding of not only fundamental social phenomena like empathy and aggression, but of the basic emotional processes that motivate these behaviors.

Egocentric Perceptions of the Environment in Primary, but not Secondary, Psychopathy

Several theories of psychopathy link it to an egocentric mode of perceiving the world. This explanatory perspective is quite plausible given that psychopaths are viewed as callous, uncaring, and narcissistic. This explanatory perspective, though, has been an insufficient focus of research, particularly in basic cognitive tasks. Building on the work of Wapner and Werner (1957), an implicit measure of cognitive egocentrism was developed. Continuous variations in primary and secondary psychopathy were assessed in a sample of college undergraduates (N = 80). Individuals high in primary psychopathy exhibited cognitive egocentrism, whereas individuals low in primary psychopathy did not. On the other hand, variations in secondary psychopathy were non-predictive of performance in the task. Results are discussed in terms of theories of psychopathy, distinctions between its primary and secondary components, and the utility of modeling egocentrism in basic cognitive terms.

Psychopathy-related differences in selective attention are captured by an early event-related potential

According to the response modulation model, the poorly regulated behavior of psychopathic individuals reflects a problem reallocating attention to process peripheral information while engaged in goal-directed behavior (Patterson & Newman, 1993). We evaluated this tenet using male prisoners and an early event-related potential component (P140) to index attentional processing. In all task conditions, participants viewed and categorized letter stimuli that could also be used to predict electric shocks. Instructions focused attention either on the threat-relevant dimension of the letters or an alternative, threat-irrelevant dimension. Offenders with high scores on Hare's (2003) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised displayed a larger P140 under alternative versus threat conditions. Beyond demonstrating psychopathy-related differences in early attention, these findings suggest that psychopathic individuals find it easier to ignore threat-related distractors when they are peripheral versus central to their goal-directed behavior.

Parallel syndromes: two dimensions of narcissism and the facets of psychopathic personality in criminally involved individuals

Little research has examined different dimensions of narcissism that may parallel psychopathy facets in criminally involved individuals. In this study, we examined the pattern of relationships between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, assessed using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory-16 and the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale, respectively, and the four facets of psychopathy (interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial) assessed via the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version. As predicted, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism showed differential relationships to psychopathy facets, with grandiose narcissism relating positively to the interpersonal facet of psychopathy and vulnerable narcissism relating positively to the lifestyle facet of psychopathy. Paralleling existing psychopathy research, vulnerable narcissism showed stronger associations than grandiose narcissism to (a) other forms of psychopathology, including internalizing and substance use disorders, and (b) self- and other-directed aggression, measured with the Life History of Aggression and the Forms of Aggression Questionnaire. Grandiose narcissism was nonetheless associated with social dysfunction marked by a manipulative and deceitful interpersonal style and unprovoked aggression. Potentially important implications for uncovering etiological pathways and developing treatment interventions for these disorders in externalizing adults are discussed.

Intrinsic limbic and paralimbic networks are associated with criminal psychopathy

BACKGROUND

Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with impairments in decision-making, empathy, and impulsivity. Recent brain imaging studies suggest that psychopathy is associated with abnormalities in limbic/paralimbic brain regions. To date, no studies have examined functional brain connectivity measures using independent component analyses (ICA) in adults with psychopathy. Here, we test hypotheses regarding paralimbic connectivity in adult incarcerated individuals stratified by psychopathy scores.

METHODS

One hundred and two prison inmates were rated using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). FMRI data were collected while subjects performed an auditory target detection "oddball" task. FMRI data were analyzed using group ICA to identify functional networks responding to the oddball task correlating with psychopathy scores.

RESULTS

Components demonstrating significant correlations with psychopathy included a default mode network, a frontoparietal component, and a visual/posterior cingulate component. Modulation trends correlated strongly with factor 2 (impulsivity) and total PCL-R scores in the frontoparietal and visual/posterior cingulate networks, and with factor 1 (affective) scores within the default mode network. The posterior cingulate region factored significantly in the modulation trends observed.

CONCLUSION

Consistent with the hypothesis of limbic/paralimbic abnormalities associated with psychopathy, modulation trends correlated strongly with PCL-R scores. There is strong evidence to implicate the posterior cingulate in aberrant functional connectivity associated with the manifestation of psychopathic symptoms. Future investigations comparing functional trends associated with the posterior cingulate in psychopathic subjects may provide further insight into the manifestation of this disorder.

Reduced prefrontal connectivity in psychopathy

Linking psychopathy to a specific brain abnormality could have significant clinical, legal, and scientific implications. Theories on the neurobiological basis of the disorder typically propose dysfunction in a circuit involving ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). However, to date there is limited brain imaging data to directly test whether psychopathy may indeed be associated with any structural or functional abnormality within this brain area. In this study, we employ two complementary imaging techniques to assess the structural and functional connectivity of vmPFC in psychopathic and non-psychopathic criminals. Using diffusion tensor imaging, we show that psychopathy is associated with reduced structural integrity in the right uncinate fasciculus, the primary white matter connection between vmPFC and anterior temporal lobe. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that psychopathy is associated with reduced functional connectivity between vmPFC and amygdala as well as between vmPFC and medial parietal cortex. Together, these data converge to implicate diminished vmPFC connectivity as a characteristic neurobiological feature of psychopathy.

The psychopath magnetized: insights from brain imaging

Psychopaths commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, and this places a substantial economic and emotional burden on society. Elucidation of the neural correlates of psychopathy may lead to improved management and treatment of the condition. Although some methodological issues remain, the neuroimaging literature is generally converging on a set of brain regions and circuits that are consistently implicated in the condition: the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and the anterior and posterior cingulate and adjacent (para)limbic structures. We discuss these findings in the context of extant theories of psychopathy and highlight the potential legal and policy implications of this body of work.

The role of prefrontal cortex in psychopathy

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by remorseless and impulsive antisocial behavior. Given the significant societal costs of the recidivistic criminal acti\xadvity associated with the disorder, there is a pressing need for more effective treatment strategies and, hence, a better understanding of the psychobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is likely to play an important role in psychopathy. In particular, the ventromedial and anterior cingulate sectors of PFC are theorized to mediate a number of social and affective decision-making functions that appear to be disrupted in psychopathy. This article provides a critical summary of human neuroimaging data implicating prefrontal dysfunction in psychopathy. A growing body of evidence associates psychopathy with structural and functional abnormalities in ventromedial PFC and anterior cingulate cortex. Although this burgeoning field still faces a number of methodological challenges and outstanding questions that will need to be resolved by future studies, the research to date has established a link between psychopathy and PFC.

Reduced susceptibility to the attentional blink in psychopathic offenders: implications for the attention bottleneck hypothesis

OBJECTIVE

Newman and Baskin-Sommers (in press) have proposed that psychopathy reflects an attention bottleneck that interferes with processing contextual information, including the timely processing of affective and inhibitory cues that initiate self-regulation. Despite a wealth of evidence that attention moderates the affective, inhibitory, and self-regulation deficits of psychopathic offenders, to date there is little or no evidence that psychopathic offenders perform abnormally on a canonical measure of selective attention. In this study, we address this gap in the literature and clarify the attention-related abnormality in psychopathy.

METHOD

We administered the attentional blink (AB) task to 37 male prisoners assessed with Hare's (2003) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. In the AB paradigm, participants identify targets in a rapid serial visual presentation. Distracters' temporal proximity to the first target elicits a conflict between attending to the target and attending to the distracters. Greater conflict results in a larger AB (i.e., reduced accuracy for the second target).

RESULTS

As predicted, psychopathic offenders displayed a significantly smaller AB (i.e., better accuracy throughout the blink interval) than nonpsychopathic offenders.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent with the attentional bottleneck hypothesis, psychopathic participants were less susceptible to distracter effects following presentation of an initial target. The results clarify the nature of the attention bottleneck in psychopathy, the circumstances in which it enhances versus interferes with performance, and its implications for more ecologically valid conditions involving the sequential presentation of goal-relevant and goal-incongruent information.

Attention network performance and psychopathic symptoms in early adolescence: an ERP study

Reaction time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) measures were used to examine the relationships between psychopathic symptoms and three major attention networks (alerting, orienting, and executive attention) among a community sample of youth. Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick and Hare 2001) total and subscale scores were negatively correlated with ERP measures of attentional alerting, indicating that youth with psychopathic symptoms had difficulty using warning cues to prepare for upcoming targets. APSD total scores were not related to performance on measures of orienting or executive attention, although weaker executive attention was found among youth with higher scores on the Impulsivity subscale. These findings support attention-based models of psychopathy and provide evidence of specific deficits in attentional alerting among youth with psychopathic traits. Deficiencies in attentional alerting may be related to noradrenergic functioning and may have cascading effects on higher order cognitive and affective processing.

Evaluating the generalizability of a fear deficit in psychopathic African American offenders

Laboratory studies of psychopathy have yielded an impressive array of etiologically relevant findings. To date, however, attempts to demonstrate the generalizability of these findings to African American psychopathic offenders have been largely unsuccessful. The fear deficit has long been regarded as the hallmark of psychopathy, yet the generalizability of this association to African American offenders has not been systematically evaluated. In this study, we used an instructed fear paradigm and fear-potentiated startle to assess this deficit and the factors that moderate its expression in African American offenders. Furthermore, we conceptualized psychopathy using both a unitary and a two-factor model, and we assessed the constructs with both interview-based and self-report measures. Regardless of assessment strategy, results provided no evidence that psychopathy relates to fear deficits in African American offenders. Further research is needed to clarify whether the emotion deficits associated with psychopathy in European American offenders are applicable to African American offenders.

Serotonin transporter gene associations with psychopathic traits in youth vary as a function of socioeconomic resources

Although prior research has examined the genetic correlates of antisocial behavior, molecular genetics influences on psychopathic traits remain largely unknown. Consequently, we investigated the influence of polymorphic variation at the serotonin transporter protein gene (SLC6A4) and socioeconomic resources (SES) on psychopathic traits in youth across two distinct samples in two separate studies. In Study 1, a main effect of serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) genotype was associated with the impulsivity dimension of psychopathy. That is, individuals homozygous for the short allele evidenced more impulsivity than did those homozygous for the long allele. In contrast, a gene-environment interaction was associated with the callous-unemotional and narcissistic features of psychopathy. Callous-unemotional and narcissistic traits increased as SES decreased only among youths with the homozygous-long (l/l) genotype, a novel finding replicated and extended in Study 2. These studies provide preliminary results that the l/l genotype confers risk for the emotional deficits and predatory interpersonal traits associated with psychopathy among youths raised in disadvantaged environments.

The other allele: exploring the long allele of the serotonin transporter gene as a potential risk factor for psychopathy: a review of the parallels in findings

Converging evidence suggests that the short allele of the serotonin transporter gene polymorphism increases risk for a variety of psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. Thus, the short allele is typically considered the "risk" allele, and findings related to the long allele are rarely discussed. However, upon closer examination, findings associated with the long allele of the serotonin transporter gene share striking similarities with findings from studies of psychopathy. Here, the parallels between findings associated with the long/long genotype and findings associated with psychopathic traits in the areas of neuropsychology, psychophysiology, hormones, and brain imaging are reviewed. It is suggested that the long/long genotype may be a potential risk factor for the development of psychopathic traits.

Multimethod assessment of psychopathy in relation to factors of internalizing and externalizing from the Personality Assessment Inventory: the impact of method variance and suppressor effects

Research to date has revealed divergent relations across factors of psychopathy measures with criteria of internalizing (INT; anxiety, depression) and externalizing (EXT; antisocial behavior, substance use). However, failure to account for method variance and suppressor effects has obscured the consistency of these findings across distinct measures of psychopathy. Using a large correctional sample, the current study employed a multimethod approach to psychopathy assessment (self-report, interview and file review) to explore convergent and discriminant relations between factors of psychopathy measures and latent criteria of INT and EXT derived from the Personality Assessment Inventory (Morey, 2007). Consistent with prediction, scores on the affective-interpersonal factor of psychopathy were negatively associated with INT and negligibly related to EXT, whereas scores on the social deviance factor exhibited positive associations (moderate and large, respectively) with both INT and EXT. Notably, associations were highly comparable across the psychopathy measures when accounting for method variance (in the case of EXT) and when assessing for suppressor effects (in the case of INT). Findings are discussed in terms of implications for clinical assessment and evaluation of the validity of interpretations drawn from scores on psychopathy measures.

Mapping Gray's BIS and BAS Constructs onto Factor 1 and Factor 2 of Hare's Psychopathy Checklist - Revised

Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST; Gray, 1987; Gray & McNaughton, 2000) has proven to be a valuable tool for understanding psychopathy (e.g., Fowles, 1980, 1988; Newman & Malterer, 2009; Poythress, Edens, Landfield, Lilienfeld, Skeem, & Douglas, 2008). Recent research has linked two RST constructs, the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioral Activation System (BAS), to individuals with primary psychopathy and secondary psychopathy (Lykken, 1995; Newman, MacCoon, Vaughn, & Sadeh, 2005): Primary psychopaths manifest low BIS reactivity and secondary psychopaths manifest high BAS reactivity. In the present study, we examine the relationships between the BIS/BAS constructs and Factors 1 and 2 of the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R) in a sample of 472 incarcerated male offenders. Paralleling their relationships with primary and secondary psychopathy, the BIS/BAS constructs were differentially related to the two PCL-R factors. Specifically, the influence of the BIS was found to be more prominent than the influence of the BAS for Factor 1, and the influence of the BAS was more prominent than that of the BIS for Factor 2.