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Psychopaths Have Brain Structure Abnormality
mmmscience writes "A group of scientists has identified a structure in the brain of psychopaths that is abnormal when compared with controls. The change is found in the uncinate fasciculus, a bridge of white matter that connects the amygdala (emotion/aggression brain region) and the orbitofrontal cortex (decision making region). Interestingly, the greater the abnormality in the region, the more severe the levels of sociopathy in a subject. The results were published as 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy' in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial." The study's results have not yet been replicated by other researchers.
Sometimes they occur together, but this is not always the case.
Given the brain's ability to mold itself with use, I wonder whether this abnormality is a contributing factor of the psychopathic behavior, or a result of it?
I don't have the reference handy but I once came across a study showing that incarcerated psychopaths who undergo treatment for the condition are statistically more likely to demonstrate a greater degree of psychopathy in the future than are those who do not undergo treatment.
Any psychiatrists out there want to back me up?
A much larger study is going to be needed to see if having this deformity is (a) unique to psychopaths, and (b) always present in them. If that's the case, great. A screening can be done early. If not, it sounds like a pretty scary way to lock people up in advance of them doing anything (which itself is a very very bad idea).
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Perhaps one thing that might restore sanity to the world is a bit of screening for this characteristic and perhaps some surgical corrections.
Yeah, I know that would never happen... "these" particular sociopaths are our leaders and our heroes. We shouldn't identify them with negatives should we... so let's continue supporting our sociopathic world leadership as we always have.
The summary mentions use of such scans in court cases. Frankly, that worries me a fair bit. Saying to a jury "look, this guy's brain shows that he's likely to kill people, so he's probably the murderer" is worrisome. It is all the more worrisome because of the implied argument that the individual should be locked up anyways. There's also the additional issue that when there are brain differences detected with MRI and similar methods they are often at a large-scale statistical level and there might be a substantial fraction of normal people whose brain structure looks close to that of a psychopath. I can't access the original study, so I can't tell.
This does also bring up the standard issues of free will and such. At minimum, if someone commits heinous crimes due to brain problems it makes it ethically problematic to engage in essentially punitive imprisonment.
There's a hypothesis that CEOs are disproportionately selected for sociopathy. If that is true, particularly in the case of banks (which are too big to fail -- ie: they have a taxpayer sponsored safety net), then we have a vested interest in finding out if the hypothesis is true.
http://www.google.com/search?q=sociopath+executive
Given the lack of remorse, the ease with which they claim entitlement in the face of their own catastrophic failure, and that we have been left holding the tab, it seems that a concrete test like this might be reasonable.
Just a thought.
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It would be interesting if you could fix sociopathy with a knife.
Well, you can but firearms are generally more effective and easier to employ ;)
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We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Well that certainly explains why Mike Harris closed down all those mental hospitals. All the seriously ill mental patients were all holding office.
And that was the last Terry Fox run I ever participated in.
A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial.
My response:
"There is a tendency... today to explain human behavior, to remove purpose - motive - from serious consideration. We tend to accept the notion that mechanical, not purposive, causation accounts for the things people do. Joe Sinister is a criminal because his parents beat him or because of a chemical imbalance in his brain or because of a genetic disorder that removed the function we call conscience... These explanations of human behavior may be accurate... but the issue of accuracy is, in fact, quite irrelevant to human societies. A human community that uses mechanical causation to account for human behavior cannot survive, because it cannot hold its members accountable for their behavior. That is, no matter how you account for the origin of a human behavior, a community must continue to judge the perpetrator on the basis of his intent, as near as that intent can be understood (or guessed, or assumed). That is why parents inevitably ask their children the unanswerable question: Why did you do that? Terrible as that question is, it at least puts the responsibility back on the child's head and forces the child to ask himself the question that society absolutely requires him to answer: Why do I do the things I do? And how, by changing my motives, can I change my behavior?... We must believe in motives for human behavior, or we cannot maintain community life."
~ Orson Scott Card, from the Introduction to "Cruel Miracles".
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This is scary as heck. And you think it's a pain in the backside having to take your shoes off at the airport now. "Sir, please place your head in the scanner..." Clang! "hey, how come that metal ring just tightened around my neck?" scary stuff... jp
Scan everyone involved with the design, construction, sales, and use of the scanner...
Well, you can but firearms are generally more effective and easier to employ ;)
Hey nothing psycho about that response...
Burma shave.
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They don't show a causal relationship. Changing the structure doesn't necessarily 'fix' it.
And the possibility of non-psychopaths having the structure abnormality, and/or psychopaths not having the abnormality has not been ruled out.
Given our limited understanding of the human brain, it's quite possible there be multiple things that cause psychopathic tendency.
For all we know removing perceived "abnormal" structure could wind up creating an even bigger harm, or worse disorder.
1) Correlation is not causation; this "abnormality" may be an effect of psychopathy
2) Others may have this "abnormality" without manifesting any signs of psychopathy
3) Yes, it would be interesting, but it would be even more interesting if you could fix it with a single pill that contains biologic organisms
Let's write a very inflammatory post. Suppose, as you did, that this deformity is a perfect predictor of sociopaths, and is a cause (not a consequence) of their behaviour; that is, suppose we discover that sociopaths are born. Suppose also that we can precisely determine whether a foetus has this deformity.
What if governments mandate abortion of sociopathic foetuses? I am not really sure about the issue. On one hand, if a sociopath is born, we are pretty sure they are going to make people suffer or outright kill them. On the other hand we are removing people based on what they are, not what they have done.
The disturbing thing is that such a discovery would finally give a rational basis for eugenics: instead of silly things like "being aryan" or "son of a rich family, therefore of the better part of society", we would actually have a rational criterion to trash new members of society.
I am not sure at all here. Where do we draw the line? I almost wish they don't find this out, the moral questions are harder than the science.
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When dogs go mad and bite kids, we don't investigate wether they had a bad upbringing, disease, or bad genes. They are put to sleep.
When men do the same, society excuses them on these same grounds? I'm not saying that they should be executed, I'm just wondering why we make that big a distinction between sentient creatures.
The problem is likely a lack of connections rather than too many connections.
A fairly plausible view is that, in normal people, emotions inform the reasoning portions of the brain that some action makes them or others (empathy) feel sad, and that stops you from doing that action. If the connection is missing, they just don't care about the suffering of their victims or even what happens to them as a consequence.
So, psychopathy is probably not the addition of something, but the lack of something, and that's probably difficult to put back with a knife.
If I speed because of my sum biology + experience, then can't it be argued that I really don't have a choice in speeding?
But you do have a choice. There is nothing physically preventing you from acting differently and you logically understand the consequences of your actions, both the harm you cause others, and the punishment you will face. That's all that free will and choice means. If you're biologically inclined to make choices that are bad for you or others, well, so be it; you just have to live with the consequences, which may include incarceration or execution.
Purely from a practical point of view, people who are biologically destined to be sociopaths with a propensity to cause harm to others are exactly the kind of people we need to remove from society. Whether you call that "punishment" or "treatmnet" really doesn't make a big difference.
Try to review what you think you know about "free will" and "punishment", I had some misconceptions about that too. There is no reason to believe that something like "free will" exists - it really is more of a religious thing but somehow many non-religious people cling to it. Of course I have the impression that all of my actions originate in me, but that's how consciousness works. Anyone who believes in free will is implying that his brain doesn't obey causality and that is one claim that can't just stand there, unproven... (And don't start with quantum mechanics at this point if you are not a physicist)
What's important to understand is that something being deterministic doesn't mean it doesn't look random to someone who does not have all the data. So your thoughts will continue to look like free will, even if you know that it doesn't exist. Also something like "so now we have to let all the criminals go because they had no choice?" is a completely false implication. But there's the other misconception: law/justice should have nothing to do with punishment or revenge. It is supposed to be a solution to a problem. If you have a violent criminal then you'll want to put him away so he can't attack normal people. If someone stole something, you'll want to make him give it back and maybe add some incentive to not do it again (what you may call punishment - but it only works on rational-minded people). So what about psychopaths, child abusers and so on? You can 1) put them away (doesn't really solve the problem, just the symptoms), 2) kill them (barbaric, innocent people will die as well, also not really a solution), or when it's available 3) correct what's physically wrong with them.
So if your justice system is based on revenge rather than problem-solving, then I hope these advances will affect it. As for society I guess the effect will be a lot of misunderstandings, fear and knee-jerk reactions. As usual.
most of the CEOs have the brain structure abnormality? http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/08/entertainment/et-boss8
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And if the abnormality is the result of psychopathy, not the cause?
In any case, we are not robots programmed by the structure and chemistry of our brains. My fear is that discoveries such as these will prompt people to start blaming criminal behaviour on physiological features, with brain surgery as the prescribed cure, just as ADD is overused as an excuse for misbehaving children with the result that children are being medicated with potent drugs.
Everyone still has the ability to choose their actions, and for everyone with a disorder that "forces" them to commit a crime, I'm sure you can find someone with the same feature who lives a normal life. Brains are not computers, you cannot expect to hack them for a quick fix to interpersonal problems.
I am extremely puzzled by your post. You start out asking what "if the abnormality is the result of psychopathy and not the cause" and then go on to talk like your hypothesis is proven fact. I have no choice but to ask you the opposing question: What if there turns out to be a direct, provable causation between the abnormality and psychopathy? What if there are people who literally have NO choice about their 'moral' decisions? At the very least it would put the practice of 'punishment' under a whole new light if you are punishing people for something they have no control over.
My personal view, based upon my own experience, agrees somewhat with some of what you said. MOST people can at the very least see the consequences of their actions, if not the actual morality of them, and can choose to act one way or another. On the other hand, I have met a few individuals who have no tangible empathy or sympathy, and cannot perceive that their actions will affect their or others lives adversely, no matter how much you try to teach them. I call them Neoconservatives (I joke...).
All kidding aside, punishing someone who cannot see their actions as wrong, or even realizing the adverse consequences their action will have on theirs or others lives is pointless and cruel. By better understanding and possibly treating the extreme cases instead instead of locking them away for life or killing them, possibly we can also help the ones that are not so severe to not commit a crime in a time of weakness and throwing their life away, when they could have been a productive member of society. I understand this brings up questions about free will. But at the very least, I can imagine a juvenile or first time offender gladly give up some of their own free will if it gave them back some humanity and gave them the freedom to live in society instead of being locked away from it. I realize I am getting into Anthony Burgess / Clockwork Orange territory (It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. ... It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questionsâ¦) but that example, as deep and disturbing as it was, again presumed that people actions are purely a matter of choice, and in the real world not everything is black and white. Often times there is a gray area. And sometimes, there are new discoveries and ideas that completely redefine the color scale.
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Because dogs are animals and the danger to multiple human beings outweighs the animals life because rabies is an infectious disease and thus can spread to others and must be contained. And the only way we know how to treat rabies before it becomes incurable (and knew at what point it becomes incurable) was by keeping the dogs (and humans) alive.
A State sanctioned murder is morally worse than a sociopath's, because we know better.
Revenge is NOT justice.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
They know that your brain is constantly rewiring itself. Perhaps some non-surgical and non-drug therapy could be developed.
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And not all psycho's are criminals so we still have free will. We humans are wired for more things then you probably realize, doesn't mean we have to listen to it. Our body needs to breathe, but we can drown ourselves. Our body hates pain, but people put themselves on fire out of protest. We need to eat, yet some starve themselves to death. If we can be heroes against our nature then we can at least expect others to remain normal against their nature.
Starving oneself to death is hard, but the effort required lasts only tens of days. Imagine trying to maintain that level of will for the remainder of your natural life (that is, you won't die). Even anorexics routinely give in to the urge to eat. People who drown themselves do so by setting up conditione where they will be unable to avoid drowning later. If you just stick your head under water in the sink, you WILL save yourself. Now imagine drowning yourself by simply sticking your head in a sinkfull of water when you cannot even imagine a reason why you should drown. Imagine burning yourself if you can't imagine a reason (even a bad one) why you should be burned.
Now imagine burning yourself when you can't imagine a reason you should be burned AND successfully performing any normal task we do in life AT THE SAME TIME. Hold your hand over a candle while you enjoy a ham sandwich for example. Try it while you're at work. Be sure not to let your productivity slip in the process. Take your hand out of the flame for even an instant and we'll chuck you in prison.
If we can be heroes against our nature then we can at least expect others to remain normal against their nature.
You phrased that as if it would be a lesser accomplishment. If it';s against their nature, it is not an act of remaining normal, it is an act of being a hero against their nature. To expect them to manage that for an entire lifetime when the few who manage it at all do so for weeks at most and only by ignoring all other aspects of life and when most cannot manage it at all is just absurd.
Consider how effective other "just say no" programs have been. I'm not at all saying psychopaths should be allowed to roam free doing whatever comes to mind, just that our current "correctional" system approach is useless and quite probably immoral.
As for your attempts to link race with violence, I think that the stronger correlation is not with race, but with poverty. You could also throw in some counterexamples here like various genocides (Europe, Native Americans), or the employment of slavery by certain ethnic groups to demonstrate their moral inferiority. Its not that Caucasians are morally inferior, just that they have been in power lately and more able to commit these offenses, just as other ethnic groups have been out of power.
I'm not so sure about this supposed link between poverty and violence. There's a lot of dirt-poor people who would never think to resort to violence (which unfortunately is part of why they stay poor and oppressed in some places), and there's been lots of rich people who have (such as the Max Factor heir who raped a lot of women). I think violence is probably much better linked to sociopathy, which occurs in all races and economic groups.
Sometimes I joke to people, semi-seriously, that there's two kinds of sociopaths: 1) stupid sociopaths, who usually wind up in prison, and 2) smart sociopaths, who become lawyers, politicians, and CEOs.
As for how this compares to race, I think if this were studied seriously, the only thing that'd be found is that certain races tend to be poor because of history, and children who grow up poor tend to not be as smart (since instead of getting a good education at a very young age to stimulate their mental growth, they're busy picking crops or whatever). Then, since there's far more less-intelligent people in those groups, the sociopaths among them tend to resort to violence far more often, rather than being devious liars and working their way into becoming President. So, in the USA, black people from the ghetto and white people from the trailer park tend to commit crimes and go to prison far more often, while blacks and whites and others who comes from middle-class households don't.
It would be interesting if you could fix sociopathy with a knife.
Well, you can but firearms are generally more effective and easier to employ ;)
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Lots of laws themselves are antisocial; the Jim Crow laws in the US in the early 20th century, for example. As Spock's dad would scream when he's got the Vulcan alzheimer's, "ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! *sob*"
There's a distinction in the English system between "mala prohibita" and "mala in se". The first is laws like 'smoking a joint is wrong'. The second is 'killing your neighbor is wrong'. The second were the laws that made Common Law.
When the phrase "ignorance of the law is no defence" was coined it referred to "in se" crime, and I can't find the original quote at the moment, but it went on to explain that nobody could possibly be expected to know all of the prohibita law (which is orders of more difficult today).
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And who has the right to decide who lives and who dies? And by what authority?
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Fair enough. I still think a regular prison is too good for them though. I think that something along the lines of superjail might be more effective.
From a 'feelings' perspective, I can agree with you and some of the other posters. However I really don't think that's constructive or relevant.
Science requires objectivity. To view the subject objectively, you have to remove the feelings from the equation and view it like an anthropologist viewing a primitive culture. Only then can you make a rational decision based upon facts.
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I guess that's fine if killing innocent people doesn't bother you. Just look at the death row inmates that were on appeals in Detroit and other places when DNA evidence cleared them. The appeals process helps to ensure that there was nothing overlooked, and no shortcuts taken. This is especially necessary in an age of overzealous, dishonest police and prosecutors out to make a name for themselves. There was a case where I live of a man who was sent down as a child and spent over 20 years in jail because of an overzealous sheriff and a dishonest prosecutor who hid exculpatory evidence.
http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/NEWS01/71107031
If he had been an adult, he may have gotten the death penalty, and died before anyone knew or bothered to find out the truth. Never mind the real culprit, who was free to murder again.
Then there is the case of that idiot prosecutor in Kern county, California who literally went on a modern day witch hunt (see documentary: Bakersfield's Witchhunt).
When our law system becomes infallible, then we can abolish the appeals process, and not one moment before.
And please no one try to offer the argument of: Well if they're suspected, they must have done SOMETHING wrong. That's just plain ignorant.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF