A cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychopathy: Evidence for paralimbic system dysfunction

Abstract

Psychopathy is a complex personality disorder that includes interpersonal and affective traits such as glibness, lack of empathy, guilt or remorse, shallow affect, and irresponsibility, and behavioral characteristics such as impulsivity, poor behavioral control, and promiscuity. Much is known about the assessment of psychopathy; however, relatively little is understood about the relevant brain disturbances. The present review integrates data from studies of behavioral and cognitive changes associated with focal brain lesions or insults and results from psychophysiology, cognitive psychology and cognitive and affective neuroscience in health and psychopathy. The review illustrates that the brain regions implicated in psychopathy include the orbital frontal cortex, insula, anterior and posterior cingulate, amygdala, parahippocampal gyrus, and anterior superior temporal gyrus. The relevant functional neuroanatomy of psychopathy thus includes limbic and paralimbic structures that may be collectively termed 'the paralimbic system'. The paralimbic system dysfunction model of psychopathy is discussed as it relates to the extant literature on psychopathy.

Neuroprediction of future rearrest

“…In addition, these results support existing theories that paralimbic function subserves the relationship between cognitive control and antisocial behavior (20) and that the ACC in particular may facilitate inhibitory learning by feeding error-related information to inhibitory control centers (12). Moreover, this pattern supports the view that neurocognitive endophenotypes carry the potential to characterize underlying traits and defects independently of behavioral phenotypes, such as self-report instruments and expert-rater diagnoses based on client interviews and collateral historical information.…”

Abnormal temporal and prefrontal cortical gray matter thinning in psychopaths

“…2,3 This observation serves to confirm the contribution of structural impairments in psychopathy, and further indicates that localized cortical thinning, especially in the right medial temporal cortex, and to a lesser degree, in the right dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortices may be linked to the emotional deficits in psychopaths. …”

“…1 It has been hypothesized that deficits in the fronto-temporal neural circuit, particularly the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial temporal regions and cingulate cortex, may play crucial roles in the neurobiological bases of psychopathy. 2,3 Prefrontal impairments, specifically, have been linked to poor decision making, whereas deficits in the temporal regions have been argued to contribute to the lack of emotion and social dysfunction in psychopathic individuals. We employed a cortical pattern-matching method, 4 to investigate localized differences in cortical gray matter thickness in psychopaths compared with that in non-psychopathic controls.…”

The Self-Report Psychopathy Scale SRP-III and Its Correlation with the Five Factor Model

“…Općenito, osobe sa psihopatskim poremećajem imat će povišene rezultate na dimenziji emocionalne stabilnosti, odnosno bit će nisko na neuroticizmu, dok će osobe s antisocijalnim poremećajem redovito biti nisko na dimenziji emocionalne stabilnosti, odnosno često će mijenjati raspoloženja. To se objaš-njava biološkim teorijama, koje govore o slabo pobuđenom fiziološkom sustavu u psihopata (Blair, 2006;Kiehl, 2006). Dobiveni značajni prediktori ugodnosti i savjesnosti u skladu su s očekivanjima (Antony, Bieling, Cox, Enns i Swinson, 1998;Decuyper i sur., 2009;Lloyd, Clark i Forth, 2010).…”