Abstract
Historically, psychopathic individuals have been described as suffering a chronic hyporesponsivity to negatively valent stimuli. However, while a wide body of empirical work indicates that the psychopath does not manifest normal reactivity to emotional stimuli, it does not similarly indicate that they cannot do so. To attempt to differentiate these alternatives, the current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study evaluated the extent to which offenders with varying PCL-R scores could up- (or down-) regulate their neural response to negatively valent stimuli. Participants were asked to either watch negatively- and neutrally-valent images naturally (passive-processing), or to try to increase or decrease their emotional response to the images (instructed-processing). During passive processing, high-psychopathy offenders showed reduced activity compared to both low- and mid-psychopathic offenders through a majority of emotion-relevant regions. However, when participants were instructed to try to increase their emotional response all groups showing increased activity throughout relevant regions, including left insula, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate/medial frontal cortex (ACC/mFC). Comparison of participants' subjective emotion ratings indicated that all groups showed symmetry between their neural/subjective emotion metrics, and the high-psychopathy group may have showed the greatest such symmetry. These findings suggest that psychopathic individuals may be capable of manifesting emotional reactivity to negatively valent stimuli, at least under certain conditions. Relevance for traditional and developing models of psychopathy is discussed in turn.
Highlights
Psychopathy exists as a varied constellation of behavioral, emotional and personality-based characteristics that include grandiosity, impulsivity, irresponsibility, shallow affect and a highly parasitic nature (Hare, 2003)
High-psychopathy participants (>30 on the PCL-R) showed significantly attenuated neural responses to negatively valent pictorial stimuli under passive-processing conditions, which were significantly reduced when they were instructed to try to maximize their naturally occurring emotional reactions to these same pictures. The locations of these increased neural responses included several regions involved in the generation of basic emotional responses (Lindquist et al, 2015), and which have often been shown to be attenuated in psychopathic populations (e.g. Hastings et al, 2008; Decety et al, 2013a; Seara-Cardoso et al, 2016)
Despite baseline attenuations, high-psychopathy participants appeared capable of deliberately manifesting emotional responses to the negatively valent pictorial stimuli within several regions believed to underlie emotional processing
Summary
Psychopathy exists as a varied constellation of behavioral, emotional and personality-based characteristics that include grandiosity, impulsivity, irresponsibility, shallow affect and a highly parasitic nature (Hare, 2003). These characteristics combine to form a callous and manipulative individual, with poor behavioral controls and a heightened tendency toward antisocial behavior. Historical notions, which remain influential today, posit the psychopath as suffering a chronic hyporesponsivity to aversive and/or negatively valent stimuli (Lykken, 1957; Fowles, 1980; Patrick, 1994; Lykken, 1995; Blair et al, 1995; Soderstrom, 2003; Blair, 2005; Patrick, 2007; Rothemund et al, 2012; Marsh et al, 2013).
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