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.

Comments

Psychopath != Sociopath

[Smoke2Joints]

Sometimes they occur together, but this is not always the case.

Re:Psychopath != Sociopath

[Life2Short]

Not sure where you got that from. The difference in terms can be traced back to different theoretical perspectives on the same set of symptoms. Over time, the pendulum has shifted back and forth regarding whether the symptoms were the responsibility of the individual or the social environment the individual was raised in. If you think antisocial personality disorder is the result of individual choices or some sort of illness, you may be more likely to use the term psychopath. If you think that the symptoms are the result of a person's social environment, you may be more likely to use sociopath. The terms themselves do not denote two recognized different disorders. Check out DSM for definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder, or there's always Wikipedia.

Re:Psychopath != Sociopath

[electrons_are_brave]

"Psychopath" was a term introduced in 1888 by German Psychiatrist Koch. It just meant someone with a psychopathology (i.e. a mental illness not otherwise named - a very broad category.

It's meaning was dramatically narrowed in 1928 when the psychologist Partridge redefined it to mean people who were anti-social, egocentric, manipulative etc. In 1930, Partridge further proposed that it be replaced with the term "sociopathy". He later proposed that that the two terms could be used to disctinguih between people who had a genetic disorder (psychopath) or an environmentally produced disorder (sociopath).

(From: The psychopath By Hugues Hervé, John C. Yuille).

The terms aren't used diagnostically, at least not where I am. In my neck of the woods, it's "narcisistic personality disorder" for those who have no criminal activity and "antisocial personality disorder" for those who do. Which I find very much a 19th Century way of looking at it - a diagnosis based on a moral distinction.

Re:Psychopath != Sociopath

[MindlessAutomata]

The terms aren't used diagnostically, at least not where I am. In my neck of the woods, it's "narcisistic personality disorder" for those who have no criminal activity and "antisocial personality disorder" for those who do.

Incorrect. They are related disorders, but the criteria is not the same. From wikipedia, which lists the DSM-IVTR:

APD - 3 or more of the following

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
      2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
      3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
      4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
      5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
      6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
      7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

NPD - A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance
      2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love (megalomania)
      3. Believes they are "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, people (or institutions) who are also "special" or of high status
      4. Requires excessive admiration
      5. Has a sense of entitlement
      6. Is interpersonally exploitative
      7. Lacks empathy
      8. Is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
      9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Note that the DSM-IVTR, more appropriately, is not the be-all end-all of diagnosing but is more of a guidebook and a way to standardize diagnoses. Notice that criminal activity is not necessarily a factor in rendering either diagnosis. Next time, inform yourself before spreading misinformation. NPD is characterized more by a self-centeredness, APD is characterized more by a willingness to hurt or use others for personal gain. These are not the same things.

To be used in court cases how?

[JoshuaZ]

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.

Re:To be used in court cases how?

[joocemann]

Do you know that 2% of the regular population has antisocial disorder? Do you know that 70% of prison inmates have it? .... a little factoid I like to share when I talk about dogs that bark, birds that fly, and genetically differentiable humans that do things differently.

But my point is to ask you... what do we do with them? So we confirm they're a psychopath, we acknowledge its bad to really 'punish' them because it was unavoiadble.... but then what? I guess the answer is a nice cushy white box with 3 hots and a cot...

Test Bank CEOs

[Bob9113]

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.

Re:Test Bank CEOs

[Bob9113]

1) It shouldn't matter if anyone is a sociopath as long as they do not break any laws.

That is an interesting hypothesis, but I do not concur. Our economic system, the free market, relies on good faith intent to operate efficiently. Not an intent to be good, mind you, but an intent to faithfully fulfill the agreements into which one enters. If one enters into such agreements in bad faith, it results in either distorted transactions, the inefficiency of court proceedings, or both. The law is neither a cost efficient tool for guiding the free market nor a precisely targeted one.

The goal of the free market, and its free hand, is to minimize the need for government interference by leveraging one inherent aspect of humanity; greed. That is a worthy objective because the law is known to be a blunt weapon, guided as it is by masses, influence peddlers, and politicians. Actors in bad faith can distort the legal system, and its use is costly even when it reaches the correct conclusion.

The solution to the dilemma between bad faith actors and inefficient laws in the free market is to allow corporations which are directed by actors in bad faith to fail. Perfect information, losses incurred from treating with a company that fails, and the stigma of failing the stockholders takes care of the rest. It might be considered a brutal system in some regards, but it is widely held as being relatively efficient -- when it is allowed to correct itself.

Enter the practice of not allowing banks to fail. When we engage in such inhibition of the free market, it loses its ability to correct actors in bad faith. Then we have a problem.

So, there are at least two options; find a way to make it tolerable to let banks fail so the free market can correct bad faith actors, or find a way to prevent actors in bad faith from running banks. A third path is to allow actors in bad faith to take advantage of such a system, and suffer the consequences as we did last Fall. Yet another is to establish that there are no actors in bad faith running banks.

I'm not suggesting which of those solutions is the right answer, nor that those are the only possible answers. All I'm trying to do is to establish a serious and complicated problem one must solve in developing and maintaining a healthy free market economy.

Re:Test Bank CEOs

[dunkelfalke]

There is no such thing as a healthy free market because greed is an antagonist of good faith.

Re:Corrective Surgery?

[Shakrai]

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 ;)

Cause/effect doesn't matter.

[girlintraining]

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".

Re:Causal, Relational, Caused By, or Correlation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since TFA doesn't give numbers, then the trap is fairly obvious. The public will read it as follows:

• Convicted "psychopaths" have an identifiable abnormality in their brain.
• "Normal" people don't have this abnormality.
• Therefore, anyone with this abnormality is (or will be) a convicted psychopath....thus leading to a real life Future Crimes Office.

The real questions (and I'm sure that defense attorneys will pile on this one), are "How many people with this abnormality do not end up convicted of violent crimes?" and "How many people convicted of violent crimes do not have this abnormality?"

Not everyone with a fskced-up brain is dangerous, and not everyone with a "normal" brain is safe. I would argue that your average human being is fairly dangerous as a single unit....and that danger goes up exponentially as the group size increases. Mob justice, anyone?

Re:Cause or effect?

[Architect_sasyr]

Ok, why is the increased sale of ice cream correlated to the increased number of shark attacks? Or murder?

In reality, it's probably the heat putting more people in the water, but the sale of ice cream doesn't rely imply the possibility of a shark attack. The heat too makes people frustrated and more annoyed, so more likely to snap, but these are environmental contributing factors - any individual capable of murder is capable of it during any period of hightened stress and annoyance, not just in summer.

But yes, if we didn't correlate we wouldn't have figured out that putting sticks into the fire was a good idea.

Re:Corrective Surgery?

[exley]

Well, you can but firearms are generally more effective and easier to employ ;)

Hey nothing psycho about that response...

Re:Cause or effect?

[kothmac]

Ok, why is the increased sale of ice cream correlated to the increased number of shark attacks? Or murder? ...

Sharks really love ice cream, and can smell it in the water from miles away. So called "educational" shows like to say blood instead, to prevent people from freaking out.

Re:Cause or effect?

[mcrbids]

BEGIN RANT

Our legal system is based on the concept of choice; when you commit a crime, you are assumed to be making a conscious choice, and the fact of your doing it proves the choice that you made, and thus your guilt. The laws themselves read this way: part of the definition of a crime in California is that you must INTENTIONALLY perform the illegal act, but this is almost meaningless since it's assumed that you mean to do what you do.

However, it's my belief that ultimately, there is no real choice. We are a product of our biology, genetics, epi-genetics, and experiences.We make choices based on the combination of these factors, and if it were, in fact, possible to account for all the minute variables in these factors, our decisions could be predicted in virtually every case.

The more science news I read, the more firm this conclusion, and this is no exception. And the logic is real simple: if genetics didn't make us who we are, then dogs could talk and trade stocks. But they can't, because they are dogs, and they are dogs because of their genetics, epi-genetics, and biology. Their behavior as such a dog is modified by their experiences. (dogs that are beaten as puppies behave quite differently than those that are loved, even if neither trade stocks)

So, at what point do we decide that the "temporary insanity" defense breaks down completely? 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? (and yes, I do tend towards "lead foot", if you know what I mean) It's not anytime soon, but it's there, and if current trends continue, that point *will* be reached.

When/if the singularity happens, and our personnae can be loaded as a self-morphing program into a computer, can't it be clearly demonstrated that the program does exactly what its structure dictates? Are we going to find MS Word guilty of having Clippy pop up in annoying ways, or do we just accept that it's the way it's constructed and thus has no real choice in the matter?

We pretend that people have a choice, even as we accept that paedophiles will always be paedophiles, rapists will always be rapists, criminals will always have criminal tendencies, and that there is no true cure for any of these. Isn't that an admission that there is no choice, even if our very legal foundation is predicated upon its existence?

END RANT.

Re:Corrective Surgery?

[mysidia]

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.

Re:Cause or effect?

[timeOday]

The philosophical questions surrounding free will are older than dirt. From a utilitarian perspective, perhaps it doesn't much matter; what does matter is determining when the carrot and stick may have some effect, and when they won't. Paying people increases the chance of them "choosing" to work, so we do it. Punishing 6 month olds for pooping their diapers doesn't deter them (they don't have the mental or physical capacity for potty training) so we don't do that. A belief in determinism doesn't change the situation.

mala prohibita vs. mala in se

[bill_mcgonigle]

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).