Shifting Focus Back to the Unseen

Posted on 23 November 2011 by skelley

James Fallon has the brain of a psychopath. But you wouldn’t know it from his behavior; Fallon is a loving family man with a successful career studying a range of human behavior, including the neurological correlates of psychopathy. After learning of his violent family history, he and his relatives underwent PET scans and genetic testing in search of possible inherited abnormalities. Everyone in Fallon’s family had the low-aggression variant of the MAO-A gene, important in regulating serotonin, and normal brain functioning – expect Fallon. He held up his results and was immediately alarmed. “I look just like one of those killers,” he exclaimed, “I have the pattern, the risky pattern.” Fallon’s brain has decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, an area important for moral decision-making and impulse control. How is it that Fallon’s neurological and genetic proclivities for antisocial behavior have no observable influence, and what does this mean for the future of neurolaw?

Fallon’s case parallels findings from a 2009 study led by Diego Iacono, popularly referred to as the Nun Study. Looking at evidence of Alzheimer’s in the brains of elderly sisters, Iacono and his colleagues found that “there’s a special group of people who at autopsy have the same about of pathology in the brain, but for some reason don’t show any clinical manifestations of the disease.” By analyzing the diaries of nuns from their young adulthood, the researchers found that the asymptomatic individuals exhibited superior language abilities, conveying ideas and deeper reflections in their writings. Conclusion: Biology is not omnipotent. Early experiences in learning and communicating fortified the brain in ways powerful enough to overcome the expression of neurological degeneration in Alzheimer’s.

Numerous studies document the ways in which criminal psychopaths neurologically and behaviorally differ from control subjects, but relatively little attention has been paid to individuals, like Fallon, who are psychopaths only in biology, not behavior. In 2008, Mehmet Mahmut led a team to investigate this population and found that despite sharing the same neuropsychological profile as criminal psychopaths, non-criminal psychopaths are somehow protected from developing antisocial tendencies, such as emotional and financial havoc. They speculate that an individual’s upbringing, in particular the lack of parental attachments, may steer biological underpinnings.

Clearly, brain patterns and genetic makeup are not sufficient causal factors for psychopathy; experience shapes the expression of biology. So what does this mean for the courts? This research shows that individuals with similar neurological capacities can make different choices, undermining the idea that “my brain made me do it”. But if uncontrollable experiences (e.g. childhood neglect) are directing those choices, are they any less culpable? The issue of volitional control remains complicated in cases where a poor environment contributed to psychopathic actions, but do offer insight into prevention. Neurological abnormalities are not a condemnation to crime. By promoting positive activities and relationships for at-risk children in violent environments, we can help keep psychopathy a dormant trait. We need to focus on what Iacono admits we cannot see – “the connection between cognition and pathology.”

Brain of Psychopaths: differences in function and structure

Posted on 23 November 2011 by mhuang

Making up approximately 1% of the U.S population and up to 20% of the country’s prison population, psychopath and criminals with psychopathic traits is a major focus in both the legal system and neuroscience research. Many studies have already been conducted on the brains of psychopaths in hopes of elucidating clues about the causes of their antisocial behaviors. According to one review by Blair, it has been previously revealed that psychopaths exhibit increased levels of proactive and reactive aggression. Furthermore, through fMRI studies it has been found that people with psychopathic traits often have reduced amygdala and orbito-frontal cortex activities. While it has been shown that the activities in these brain regions are reduced in psychopaths, the actual physical difference that causes these reductions has yet to be presented.

However, recently a new study conducted by Newman et al reveals decreased physical connections between the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Amygdala is critical in mediating fear and anxiety while the vmPFC is responsible for “sentiments such as empathy and guilt.” Combined, the lessened connection leads to a lower activity by these brain regions that may explain the antisocial impulses displayed by psychopaths. The researchers of this study utilized a diffusion tension imaging device (DTI) and compared results between 20 psychopathic prisoners and 20 non-psychopathic prisoners that committed similar crimes. Results revealed a “reduction in structural integrity of white matter fibers” that connects the two brain regions. Additionally, an fMRI scan was performed. Similar to previous findings, researchers found less coordinated activities. This study is perhaps the first to present both structural and functional differences in the brains of a psychopath. According to Dr. Koenigs of the research team, these results indicate that there is “a specific brain abnormality that is associated with criminal psychopathy.”

With these findings, the researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison hope to shed more light on the source of the dysfunction and future strategies in treating psychopathy. Furthermore, the researchers discuss the legal implications of their findings. They question whether the legal system can hold psychopaths as accountable as someone that does not have a brain abnormality. I believe while the legal system should react to psychopaths differently, they should not be forgiven solely base off of brain differences. It is still necessary to take them off the streets if they committed a serious crime. However, perhaps the more appropriate long term response is to employ rehabilitation and treatments rather than incarcerations and punishments.

Time to Test Corporate Leaders to Weed out Psychopaths

Posted on 23 November 2011 by krayakar

Upon hearing the term “psychopaths” on Wall Street, more often than not the image of Christian Bale in the blockbuster Psycho comes to mind. Charming, shark-like, and brilliant, these cunning business moguls earn by day and kill by night. However, this stereotype is far from true. Generally a psychopath is an individual who is unable to empathize with others, not one who has the tendency to brutally murder others. This isn’t to say though, that they wouldn’t ruin your life given the chance. In Mitchell Anderson’s article “Time to Test Corporate Leaders to Weed out Psychopaths,” he goes into what constitutes a psychopath and how these empathetically immune individuals are potentially running the economy straight into the ground.

Anderson describes psychopathy as a genetically inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from feeling normal human empathy. This leads those born with this deficiency to be unable to understand and share the feeling of others, consequently leading to a distrust of anyone else. Anderson then explains this lacking of empathy causes for investments to be made in the interest of only the psychopathic broker. This selfish form of business in the long run cause markets to crash, the need for larger bailouts, and the destruction of American savings. There is in essence a multiplier effect because this kind of business draws in those psychopathic business people who climb their way to the top and run a fair percentage of fortune 500 companies.

This multiplier effect is scarier than it sounds because it means any bailout money thrown at the problem will only sustain the issue further. If tossing money at a fiscal problem doesn’t work, then what will? This means then that the only way to move forward in a stable economy that sustains itself would be through having empathetic and moral leaders. I believe that CEOs should be tested for empathetic tendencies because so many lives and livelihoods can be put in jeopardy. Any CEO exhibiting typical charm but bullies others and creates chaos to mask their own actions should be under close watch by the rest of the company. In a crashing market like ours, we need great leaders, not selfish ones.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/11/21/Corporate-Psychopaths/

Treating Psychopathy with Therapy

Posted on 23 November 2011 by rbruner

A black man is wrongfully killed by police during an attempted arrest. First relatives and neighbors take to the streets, protesting the police’s use of undue force. Soon riots spread throughout the city and country as people loot, set fires, and destroy property. Eventually the chaos becomes less about “the cause” than the opportunism of anarchy. No, this was not Los Angeles of 1991; this was London of August 2011, and authorities are still trying to figure out what went wrong.

Police shootings are tragic but not particularly rare, and Mark Duggan was not savagely beaten to death by (later acquitted) police officers as was Rodney King. So why Duggan, why now, and why so much concern? According to “[a] government-funded study of the motivations of young people who took part in August’s rioting,” it had little to do with concern for Duggan at all. Rather, the study found that the youth who constituted the majority of the rioting factions “were driven by a combination of excitement, opportunism…and antipathy towards the police.” Most disturbingly, researchers found that bored youth viewed this mass rioting as “something to do,” and some participants even perceived the riots as a “party atmosphere,” a free alternative to a club with the bonus of looting while you party.

Since these unsettling findings, Britain has more than ever been interested in explaining and treating undesirable behavior through neuroscience, as explored by the new BBC Radio 4 series “Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Society.” In its premiere episode last Tuesday, “Brain Culture opens in a school in the South of England where staff are using the insights of neuroscience to help children who lack empathic reactions.” The headteacher explains that teachers once discouraged children with this so-called “‘callous and unemotional’ syndrome” by explaining to them how much harm they were doing to the other children. But rather than adjust their behavior, these children became even more inflammatory and hurtful. Now, the headteacher explains, they are working to “painstakingly” teach these children to learn how to feel emotion by having them “grade reactions like fear or happiness on a numerical scale” in order to learn how to respond to emotions.

In a country desperate to find a cure to youths’ apathy before more riots can break out, these “breakthroughs” are likely to inspire false hope. Although therapeutic methods such as emotion-gauging may prove effective among children who are merely bored opportunists when it comes to criminal behavior, for students with true psychopathy misdiagnosed as “callous and unemotional” syndrome, this therapy will do little. In fact, research has shown that introducing psychopaths to such group therapy in which they learn the harm that they inflict upon others “makes psychopaths worse” in the future because they better learn how to hurt and manipulate people’s emotions. As the school even observed, “the more they are told off, the angrier and more frustrated they become.” So although it would be nice to think that there is a cure-all emotion therapy to correct England’s disillusioned and apathetic youth, Brain Culture commentators and school therapists must acknowledge that such therapy used on psychopaths may do more harm than good.

Further Reading:

“Brain science and the law: should we understand more and condemn less?”

“Opportunism and dissatisfaction with police drove rioters, study finds”

Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Society

“Psychopaths Among Us”

Psychopathic Tendencies and Addiction

Posted on 17 November 2011 by Michael Padon

Almost all drug addiction is caused by an artificial increase in the levels of dopamine in the brain, the chemical behind the sensation of pleasure. This neurotransmitter drives the reward system of the brain since a behavior that produces pleasure is likely to be regularly repeated. This system also drives drug addiction since most drugs artificially increase the level of dopamine in the brain, beyond the level normally produced by the body. However, unlike drug addicts, people inclined to psychopathy have a naturally greater release of dopamine and, as a result, a distorted pleasure system. In light of this, research has claimed that problems with the brain’s reward system might lead to psychopathy. However, drug use, which is much more treatable, may be a better and more common explanation for violent behavior and poor decision-making than psychopathy.

The is a difference in the prevalence of addiction and psychopathy. Robert Hare, the man responsible for the Psychopathy Checklist, estimates about 1% of Americans have psychopathy, which is much less compared to the 8.3% of Americans age 12 and older who report using illicit drugs. Life time drug usage has also been shown to alter the volume of grey matter in the brain which results in an increase in violent behavior and a lowering of response inhibition. This study also identified separate areas of the brain where larger grey matter volume correlates to aggression, and can be present in psychopaths. In drug addicts who are also violent offenders, the combination of week resistance and a strong impulses result in a stronger drive to seek pleasure. Drug addiction can explain the impulsivity, irresponsibility, delinquency, and poor behavioral controls, which are all on Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist. Then, since addiction and psychopathy effect different part of the brain, they can both be present at the same time and present compound and more severe symptoms, which, when combined, could present as psychopathy when it is really just a tendency for psychopathy and life long drug addiction.

In light of the interplay between addiction and psychopathy, elimination of addiction will have lower rates of recidivism, and addicts can also be viewed as more culpable since they actively took the drug, reducing inhibition and grey matter volume willfully, unlike psychopathy which is more predetermined. Addicts were given more choices than psychopaths as to how they behave in life, making them more responsible and blameworthy for their actions. Psychopathy might be a powerful prediction of susceptibility to drug addiction and other manifestations of antisocial personality disorder, but the manifestation of drug addiction with comorbid psychopathic tendencies does not lend itself to a proper diagnosis of psychopathy. Instead, drug addiction should be treated and then the subject should be reevaluated for psychopathy. For sentencing, a criminal exhibiting psychopathic tendencies and drug addiction should be culpable to a similar degree as a drug addict since addiction explains many of the behaviors and has a potential for lower recidivism.

Preventing Psychopathy?

Posted on 16 November 2011 by pthompson

In the primary school system, extraordinary effort is made to integrate students with physical or learning handicaps both academically and socially. However, most students that have a difficult time following teachers’ instruction or get into conflict with their classmates are typically just labeled as troublemakers, and allowed to continue through a rough life in school without much assistance. Without help from teachers or family, these students often have a difficult time pursuing careers after college due to their lack of social skills, and become a great cost to society. With the recent developments in neuroscience that show that a lack of empathy can be based in brain development, should students such as this be considered to have mental handicaps? If so, would they benefit from being given special assistance to reintegrate them with the rest of society?

This week, BBC’s new radio program, Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Society, explored the prospective benefits of empathy training for antisocial children in schools. The desire for such training is based out of the strong correlation found between anti-social behavior in childhood and psychopathic behavior in adulthood. Many neuroscientists and psychologists hope that if children with antisocial tendencies are recognized and treated early, they may be prevented from developing psychopathic tendencies later in life.

The program mentioned that a school in the south of England is currently working with neuroscientists to better understand misbehaving and destructive students that lack empathy. These students have a difficult time understanding the emotions of others, and therefore are easily frustrated and driven to aggressive behavior. The teachers are working with scientists to help teach the children how to recognize and respond to other people’s emotions. Although the children may not intuitively understand the feelings of others, the teachers hope that these skills can be taught, just as they are taught mathematics and writing. The teachers are hopeful that the students will develop the skills to understand how people tend to feel, and how to act in a socially safe way. Until now, it seems that most efforts to teach empathy and emotional understanding have taken place with autistic children (Schrandt, Townsend, & Poulson, 2009). However, teachers, parents, and neuroscientists are all hopefully that these skills can also be taught to antisocial children. Not only could this therapy help students to perform better academically and socially in school, but it could also be a critical preventative component in a forward-looking legal system.

Brain Scanning on Cellphones

Posted on 2 November 2011 by dmachado

A central topic in the field of neurolaw is how all this knowledge discovered about the inner workings of our brain will affect society as we know it. With the direction neuroscience development is taking us, it is hypothesized that we might reach a time where detailed brain scans can be conducted immediately at any location. In addition, average individuals will have a substantial understanding of the structure and function of specific regions that one could read a brain scan and know the deepest details about a person and his/her personality. However, current research indicates that we might actually be closer to this speculation than we thought.

A team of scientists at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) developed a mobile brain scanner that is powered by a sophisticated cell phone. This mobile application is making huge leaps in revealing the secrets of our consciousness using a headset that can be purchased with the cell phone. The headset is essentially a 14-channel electroencephalography (EEG) device that records the electric activity of the scalp. Ordinarily, the device would display the visualization of a 3-D brain and, after connecting to a remote server, it would classify the data. However, the team, led by Jakob Larsen of the DTU, intends on moving all these steps straight onto the phone so that the data is processed instantly.

The implications of this technology on our society are tremendous. Currently there are experts in marketing who know the ins and outs of how the consumer thinks, and there are programs like Amazon that simply guess what a shopper might be looking for, but this brain scanning technology would take this modeling to a whole new level. There would also be immense repercussions in the law. World renowned neuroscientist Jim Fallon dedicated his career to studying the neurobiology of serial murderers and psychopaths and neuroscience has shown that there are specific abnormalities that suggest psychopathic tendencies. Towards the end of his career, Fallon and his family decided to take the neurological brain scans that he had studied his whole life and they showed Jim Fallon having markings quite similar to those found in psychopaths. He claims he is not a psychopath, but he does feel these tendencies.

With the upcoming growth in this technology, humans may eventually rely significantly on its results and men like Jim Fallon who have committed no wrong in their life may the locked behind bars for merely having the brain of a psychopath. The technological progression is remarkable, but the ethical issues that arise with are important factors that must be dealt with along the way.

Why Do Psychopaths Kill?

Posted on 26 October 2011 by dmachado

A reason why the field of neurolaw has gained so much attention is partly due to its ability to answer questions that have been around for decades. Advancements in the neuroscience are continuously shedding light on age old questions that have been left alone due to lack of evidence. One of the questions that are constantly addressed is the existence of evil and the actions that it essentially brings about, including varying degrees of violence and murder. An article by Michael Hanlon discusses the effects of the findings on psychopathy on our world today and the implications it results in.
Studies of functional MRI techniques on individuals imprisoned indefinitely for heinous violent crimes have shown that these individuals clearly think differently. They are simply hard-wired differently. Dr. Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology, says that these psychopaths are afflicted with imperfectly developed neurobiology. Specifically, they lack the empathy center of the brain that each of us feels when we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes to feel what they feel.
However, although evidence suggests this is true, Hanlon believes this is not enough. There is a significant gap between being unable to feel emotionally and having an urge to kill other human beings. Hanlon decides there needs to be more motivation for a human being to find pleasure in cold blooded murder. Both Jack the Ripper and his copycat murderer claim to be sexually aroused at the sight of a corpse. Another factor that these psychopaths must be lacking in addition to empathy is sympathy, the ability to share feelings with one another.
Most individuals accused of being serial killers are often described as either ‘mad’ or ‘psychopathic’. What this essentially means is they are either spending the rest of their lives in a mental facility under close observation or under lock and key in a high security prison. Although it is mostly agreed upon that these steps are necessary for the sake of society, it is our duty to conduct more research into understanding them. These horrific acts are apparently not brought about by these people, but by their subconscious hard-wiring that control them.

Can Words tell people apart?

Posted on 20 October 2011 by hhan

In addition to outer appearances and tone, we distinguish people based on their word choice. For example, “Valley Girl Cheerleaders” use the words “um,” “like,” “totally” and “my hair” whereas the stereotype of pompous trust fund babies is they use $3 words to sound sophisticated. Thus, analyzing the production of language, such as the types of articles used, word choice, and subject matter, may be a useful tool in categorizing individuals into groups. Psychopaths have been previously shown to have deficiencies in language processing. A 1991 study by Williamson, Harpur and Hare showed that psychopaths took a significantly longer amount of time to react to emotional words compared to normal individuals. Likewise, a 1988 study by the same authors noted that when given a triad of words and asked to choose two with the most similar meaning, psychopaths tended to group words based on their literal meaning whereas nonpsychopaths grouped words based on their connotations. These studies suggest, “psychopaths do not understand the emotional content of language” (reviewed in Hiatt and Newman, 2006) and is consistent with the imaging data that psychopaths have decreased function of the amygdala, an important region in emotional processing (reviewed by Blair, 2010). However, it is unclear if psychopaths also have a problem with the production of language.

An October 2011 study by Jeffrey Hancock of Cornell University examined the verbal responses of 52 convicted murders, 14 of which were diagnosed psychopaths while 38 had no history of mental illness. The subjects were asked to describe their crimes in full detail and their interview was taped and analyzed by a computer. They found that psychopaths were more likely to use filler words like “um” and “uh” when describing an emotional event. They were more likely to use words like “because,” “since” and “so that,” which suggest a rational cause-and-effect description of their crimes. Finally, psychopaths were more likely to be focused on primitive, personal needs such as food, sex, or money whereas non-psychopaths talked more about spirituality, family, religion, and things that are more abstract and address social needs. Overall, the study suggests that psychopaths have a unique language signature that can aid in their identification during diagnosis.

These results further support the notion that psychopaths have difficulties in emotional processing and their language output correlates with previous work. Despite these promising results however, the study has a small sample size of only 14 diagnosed subjects, making it underpowered. Likewise, it is unclear if the subjects all come from similar backgrounds, making it difficult to determine if these results can be applied to other psychopaths across cultural and language boundaries. Most importantly, does this test completely abolish the PCL-R, the standard for diagnosing psychopathy, or will this act as a complement to the test? Overall, this computer analysis, along with advances in neuroimaging, will be a useful complement to diagnosing psychopathy, but more work needs to be done to ensure it is not specific to one particular population.

Further References:

Hancock, J. T., Woodworth, M. T., Porter, S. (2011). Hungry like the wolf: A word-pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths. Legal and Criminological Psychology.

Hare, R. D., Williamson, S. E., & Harpur, T. J. (1988). Psychopathy and language. In T. E. Moffitt & S. A. Mednick (Eds.),Biological contributions to crime causation (pp. 68-92). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.

*Williamson, S. E., Harpur, T. J., & Hare, R. D. (1991). Abnormal processing of affective words by psychopaths.Psychophysiology, 28(3), 260-273.

Hiatt, K.D., & Newman, J.P. (2006). Understanding psychopathy: The cognitive side. In Patrick, C.J. (Eds.), Handbook of psychopathy (334-352). New York: The Guilford Press.

Psychopaths: detection using speech patterns?

Posted on 18 October 2011 by mhuang

Wily and manipulative, these are perhaps two of the most troublesome characteristics of psychopaths in the court room. Because of their natural deceptiveness and cunningness, interviewing psychopaths for criminal activities is a difficult task. As stated by psychopathy expert Woodworth “one can spend two to three hours and come out feeling hypnotized.” However, this problem could be mitigated by a recent study conducted by Hancock et al of Columbia University where they found distinctive speech patterns associated with psychopaths using statistical text analysis.

To our current understanding, psychopaths make up around 1 percent of the general population and makes up for up to 25 percent of incarcerated males in federal correctional settings. Individuals with psychopathy express anti-social behaviors and violent intentions to harm others, often accompanied with a lack of compassion and empathy and a sense of self-grandiose. It was speculated that the lack of empathy correlates with decreased amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex responses in the brain, leading to issues in emotional processing. In the study conducted by Hancock, 14 psychopathic murderers were asked to narrate their crime. These narrations were analyzed and compared with those of 38 non-psychopathic murderers.

Using linguistic tools that analyzes semantic contents and emotional characteristics of the narratives, it was discovered that psychopaths shows a “predatory and instrumental world view, unique socio-emotional needs, and a poverty of affect.” First, psychopaths were more likely to use subordinate conjunctions such as “because” and “so that,” indicating that the crime is the logical outcome of a plan. Second, psychopaths were found to describe the crime in past tense more often, suggesting a detachment from a crime long ago. Third, psychopaths were more likely to state that the crime was committed for basic personal needs like food and shelter compared to social and spiritual needs described by non-psychopathic murderers. This distinction could represent a more primitive and predatory world view. Furthermore, psychopaths use more pauses in their recollection and are obsessed with details. Finally, the psychopaths were not hesitant at all to talk about their actions, perhaps due to their unique narcissism. Overall, “psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level,” says Hancock.

The advantage of this investigation technique lies in the fact that speech patterns and specific word choices are often unconscious and could present as a useful new method to diagnose and assess psychopathy despite their inherent deceptiveness. While Hancock believes that this method will not be utilized as a definitive test to label all psychopaths, he believes it would become a valuable “tool that an investigator or clinician can use in an overall assessment.”

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