Abstract
Introduction: Psychopaths belong to a larger group of people with antisocial personality disorders and can be characterized by several symptoms: deficits in empathy, lack of remorse, impulsivity, aggressiveness and lack of behavioral control. Recent studies support the hypothesis that psychopathic offenders show structural and functional deficits in paralimbic and frontal areas associated with anticipatory planning, emotion regulation, empathy and behavioral inhibition and control. Additionally psychophysiological findings reveal differences in spontaneous brain activity as well as in event related potentials. Based on studies using feedback of slow cortical potentials (SCP-Feedback) in children with Attention Deficit-/Hyperactivity Disorder, we hypothesize that also psychopathic patients can gain volitional control of their brain activity and may profit from learned prefrontal control.
Highlights
Psychopathic individuals are characterized by impaired affective processing, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, poor planning skills and heightened aggressiveness with poor self-regulation
Based on brain self-regulation studies using neurofeedback of Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) in disorders associated with a dysregulation of cortical activity thresholds and evidence of deficient cortical functioning in psychopathy, a neurobiological approach seems to be promising in the treatment of psychopathy
The diminished cortical sensitivity to errors in externalizing pathologies including psychopathy and ADHD16–20 is correlated with a reduced amplitude of event related brain potentials (ERP), generated by the ACC37, such as the error-related negativity (ERN) which appears in the EEG about 20–150 ms after a committed error at fronto-central brain sites
Summary
Psychopathic individuals are characterized by impaired affective processing, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, poor planning skills and heightened aggressiveness with poor self-regulation. Based on brain self-regulation studies using neurofeedback of Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) in disorders associated with a dysregulation of cortical activity thresholds and evidence of deficient cortical functioning in psychopathy, a neurobiological approach seems to be promising in the treatment of psychopathy. After SCP self-regulation training, we observed reduced aggression, impulsivity and behavioral approach tendencies, as well as improvements in behavioral-inhibition and increased cortical sensitivity for error-processing. Treatment studies based on psychophysiological interventions are nonexistent, neurofeedback was considered as a potential treatment for disinhibited, antisocial and violent behavior[51] We addressed this issue and investigated if highly criminal psychopaths are able to learn to control their brain activity via neurofeedback, and if psychopathic characteristics like disinhibition, aggression and related behavioral approach tendencies will decrease after neurofeedback training. We hypothesized that improved cortical self-regulation skills will improve error processing and attention-related impulsivity on a cortical and behavioral level, resulting in an increased sensitivity to self-inflicted failure
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