Brain Processing of Fearful Facial Expression in Mentally Disordered Offenders

Abstract

Emotional facial expressions are important cues for interaction between people. The aim of the present study was to investigate brain function when processing fearful facial expressions in offenders with two psychiatric disorders which include impaired emotional facial perception; autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and psychopathy (PSY). Fourteen offenders undergoing forensic psychiatric assessment (7 with ASD, and 7 psychopathic offenders) and 12 healthy controls (HC) viewed fearful and neutral faces while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Brain activity (fearful versus neutral faces) was compared both between HC and offenders and between the two offender groups (PSY and ASD). Functional co-activation was also investigated. The offenders had increased activity bilaterally in amygdala and medial cingulate cortex as well as the left hippocampus during processing fearful facial expressions compared to HC. The two subgroups of offenders differed in five regions compared with each other. Results from functional co-activation analysis suggested a strong correlation between the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in the left hemisphere only in the PSY group. These findings suggest enhanced neural processing of fearful faces in the amygdala as well as in other facial processing brain areas in offenders compared to HC. Moreover, the coactivation between amygdala and ACC in the PSY but not the ASD group suggested qualitative differences in amygdala activity in the two groups. Since the sample size is small the study should be regarded as a pilot study.

Reward Expectation Modulates the Identification of Facial Expressions of Emotion in Antisocial Offenders

“…Facial expressions play a particularly important role in emotion processing (Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2008). In reality, an impairment in the identification of emotional facial expressions can lead to social failure and criminal behaviour (Dodge, Laird, Lochman, & Zelli, 2002;Howner et al, 2011). In fact, deficits in recognising facial expressions of emotions have been found in studies performed with antisocial populations, in general, including people with aggressive behaviour, unspecified criminals, delinquents, externalising individuals (Marsh & Blair, 2008), prisoners (Robinson et al, 2012), and in the personality disorders closely associated to criminality, such as, antisocial personality disorder (Dawel, O'Kearney, McKone, & Palermo, 2012;Dolan & Fullam, 2006;Marsh & Blair, 2008), psychopathy (Dolan & Fullam, 2006;Hastings, Tangney, & Stuewig, 2008;Marsh & Blair, 2008;Wilson, Juodis, & Porter, 2011) or borderline personality disorder (Robin et al, 2012).…”

Identification of Emotions in Offenders With Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASP)

“…Nevertheless, contradictory data have been found in specific offender samples, for example, suggesting a physiological hyper-reactivity in those who physically abuse children (McCanne & Hagstrom, 1996) and in people with antisocial personality disorder (Iria, Barbosa, & Paixão, 2010). More recently, a neuroimaging study also found contradictory data suggesting that offenders have enhanced neural processing of fearful faces in the amygdala as well as in other facial processing brain areas, compared to controls (Howner et al, 2011). Also, Seidel et al (2013) found that offenders show reduced physiological responses specifically during the identification of fear and disgust.…”

“…Since deficits in the identification of emotions could be related to failures in social competence and the genesis of criminal behavior (Blair, Peschardt, Budhani, Mitchell, & Pine, 2006; Dodge, Laird, Lochman, & Zelli, 2002; van Goozen, Fairchild, Snoek, & Harold, 2007; Howner et al, 2011), psychobiologic models have proposed differences in the ability to identify facial expressions in offenders and non-offenders (Dolan & Fullam, 2006; Marsh & Blair, 2008). In fact, the ability to identify facially expressed emotions seems to be associated to individual or group specificities (Iria & Barbosa, 2009; Pham & Philippot, 2010) and populations with an antisocial lifestyle (people with psychopathy and borderline personality disorder, criminal recidivists, and those suffering from behavioral disorders) frequently exhibit deficits in identifying emotions from facial expressions in general (Hastings, Tangney, & Stuewig, 2008), or negative expressions, such as fear (Blair et al, 2004) and anger (Marsh & Blair, 2008).…”