Empathy In Psychopaths: A Neurological Basis?
Tuesday, September 24, 2013 - 16:50
in Psychology & Sociology
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. Though less than one percent of the general population meet the criteria, the rate of psychopathy in prisons is around 23%. As you might suspect, psychopaths don't much care when people are in pain. A new paper using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the brains of 121 inmates of a medium-security prison in the USA finds that in psychopaths, the brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making. read more