Emotion in Criminal Offenders With Psychopathy and Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

The results support the theory that psychopaths are characterized by a pronounced lack of fear in response to aversive events. Furthermore, the results suggest a general deficit in processing affective information, regardless of whether stimuli are negative or positive. Emotional hyporesponsiveness was specific to psychopaths, since results for offenders with BPD indicate a widely adequate processing of emotional stimuli.

Psychophysiological reactivity to traumatic and abandonment scripts in borderline personality and posttraumatic stress disorders: a preliminary report

“…From a clinical point of view, BPD patients were described to show affective hyperarousal in response to emotional stressors (Linehan, 1993). In a laboratory setting, however, hyperarousal in response to stressful stimuli has not been clearly demonstrated, either in the present study or in earlier investigations (Herpertz et al, 1999(Herpertz et al, , 2001). …”

Neurocognitive elements of antisocial behavior: Relevance of an orbitofrontal cortex account

“…This highlights a dissociation between appraisal of fearful expressions in others and the subjective experience of fear (Anderson & Phelps, 2002). Psychopaths, however, also show lack of fear (Herpertz et al, 2001). In contrast, individuals suffering from social phobia show increased amygdala activation (Stein, Goldin, Sareen, Zorilla, & Brown, 2002).…”

Effect of d-amphetamine on emotion-potentiated startle in healthy humans: implications for psychopathy and antisocial behaviour

“…There is robust evidence for impaired startle potentiation to aversive stimuli (e.g. Benning et al 2005;Herpertz et al 2001;Patrick et al 1993;Vaidyanathan et al 2011) as well as amygdala dysfunction (reviews, Blair 2010; Gao et al 2009) in psychopathic individuals. Given consistent evidence from both animal (review, Davis et al 1993) and human studies (e.g.…”

“…Measures of fearfulness and psychopathy show positive and negative associations, respectively, with startle potentiation during unpleasant picture viewing (e.g. Benning et al 2005;Herpertz et al 2001;Vaidyanathan et al 2011). Much is known from rodent studies about the neural substrates underlying the affect-startle relationship, with critical roles played by the amygdala in the potentiation of startle by fear (review, Davis et al 1993) and the nucleus accumbens in the attenuation of startle by pleasure (Koch et al 1996).…”