Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy

Harma Meffert, Valeria Gazzola, Johan A. den Boer, Arnold A. J. Bartels, Christian Keysers*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    239 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with a profound lack of empathy. Neuroscientists have associated empathy and its interindividual variation with how strongly participants activate brain regions involved in their own actions, emotions and sensations while viewing those of others. Here we compared brain activity of 18 psychopathic offenders with 26 control subjects while viewing video clips of emotional hand interactions and while experiencing similar interactions. Brain regions involved in experiencing these interactions were not spontaneously activated as strongly in the patient group while viewing the video clips. However, this group difference was markedly reduced when we specifically instructed participants to feel with the actors in the videos. Our results suggest that psychopathy is not a simple incapacity for vicarious activations but rather reduced spontaneous vicarious activations co-existing with relatively normal deliberate counterparts.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)2550-2562
    Number of pages13
    JournalBrain
    Volume136
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Aug-2013

    Keywords

    • vicarious responses
    • empathy
    • psychopathy
    • functional MRI
    • SUPERIOR PARIETAL CORTEX
    • VOXEL-BASED MORPHOMETRY
    • CRIMINAL PSYCHOPATHS
    • CYTOARCHITECTONIC AREAS
    • FEARFUL EXPRESSIONS
    • AFFECT RECOGNITION
    • VIOLENT OFFENDERS
    • SOCIAL COGNITION
    • FMRI DATA
    • EMOTION

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