Psychopathy: A Case-Control Study

When it comes to psychopathy, a lack of empathy is one of the most significant and well-known symptoms. However, prior to this study, there was very little information regarding the neurological deficits in people with psychopathy that contributed to lacking empathy. Until recently, psychopathy was widely considered as an untreatable illness. Identifying a pattern in the way individuals with psychopathy process empathy would not only point out malfunctioning areas of the brain, but also pave the way for possible treatments (2013).
While people with psychopathy can identify pain and distress in others, they do not experience emotional reactions to the situation. Therefore, Skelly and Kiehl (2013) hypothesized that while observing people in pain or distress, participants scoring high on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R) might exhibit impaired or alternative neurological functioning when it comes to processing empathy compared to participants who scored low on the PCL-R (2013).
This was a case-control study in which 80 incarcerated male volunteers were given stimuli that …show more content…
The participants in the control group experienced greater activation in areas of the brain that were responsible for more emotional, affective processing while participants in the high psychopathy group experienced cognitive processing with very little emotion. While perceiving people being harmed and exhibiting expressions of pain, participants in the control group experienced more activity in the periaqueductal gray, the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which plays a significant role in processing emotion and empathy. The high psychopathy group experienced more activity in the dorsal striatum, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and the posterior superior temporal sulcus