New research suggests that psychopaths may be responsible for their brain behavior: it turns out they overestimate the immediate benefits they can get from their actions. In addition, their brains can block thoughts about the consequences of their potentially immoral actions.
How many psychopaths live among us
It is estimated that one percent of the general population are psychopaths, compared to about 25 percent of prisoners. Among scientists who study psychopathy, it is generally accepted that people with this disorder have a lack of conscience or remorse, as well as impulsiveness and lack of self-control, an inability to feel emotions, superficial charm, and a grandiose sense of self-worth.
In 2011, a study was conducted, according to which three quarters of psychopaths in prison, got there because of their violent offenses. While not all psychopaths commit violence, they can act differently, using lies, deception and theft to achieve their goals.
“Psychopaths commit a huge number of crimes that harm both victims and society as a whole,” says psychologist and neurologist Joshua Buckholz of Harvard University.
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Research on psychopathy
For many years, scientific research on psychopathy has focused on emotions, in particular the idea that such people are cold-blooded, super-predators who cannot feel anything. In a new study, scientists decided to pay attention to the behavior of psychopaths.
“Regardless of the feelings psychopaths have, their behavior is characterized by a lack of self-control, so we are interested in the neuroscience of this type of decision-making,” said Bakholz.
Working with prisoners
To conduct their research, Buckholtz and his colleagues used a mobile magnetic resonance imaging scanner with which they worked in several medium security prisons in Wisconsin. They scanned the brains of 49 prisoners while they were taking part in a satisfaction test. In the course of this experiment, the scientists asked the prisoners to choose one option from the proposed ones: get less money, but immediately, or more, but later. Also for these prisoners, the researchers conducted a test to assess their level of psychopathy.
results
The researchers say that the prisoners who scored the best on tests for psychopathy showed more activity in the ventral striatum, the brain region responsible for quick selection, than those with lower levels of psychopathy. Previous research has shown that the ventral striatum is associated with the ability to evaluate different options and their importance to humans.
In addition, the scientists found that the connection that exists between the ventral striatum and a region of the brain such as the ventral medial prefrontal cortex was much weaker in psychopaths than in normal people. Preliminary work has shown that the ventral medial prefrontal cortex is essential for “time travel,” that is, for pondering the consequences of future actions.
These data show that psychopaths' antisocial behavior is due to their brains, which causes them to overestimate the possible rewards that can be received immediately, and neglect future problems due to potentially immoral actions. In fact, the more abnormalities the prisoners had in this regard, the more serious the crimes for which they were convicted turned out to be.
Will the treatment help
“The model that psychopaths use to make decisions is not that different from that used by people with disruptive behaviors such as drug abuse, binge eating disorder or gambling addiction,” Buckholz said. "Whatever other psychopaths are, such as lack of emotion, our findings show that the disorder can be treatable."
In the future, scientists have to find out if psychopaths can be helped to improve their assessment of the consequences of their actions in the future, for example, through non-invasive brain stimulation or behavioral therapy.
Scientists detailed their findings in the July 5 journal Neuron.
Anna Pismenna