How brain changes turn people into dangerous psychopaths

Violent narcissistic manipulators, psychopaths excite public consciousness and constantly appear in mass culture. People love to look at psychopaths, but in life it is better to stay away from them. They are impulsive, unable to empathize and feel guilty. A psychopath will use you without a twinge of conscience and even a person convicted of lying and betrayal will not think for a second about his behavior.

Why do people feel guilty while psychopaths lack this ability? Research shows that the reason is not a lack of proper parenting, but structural and functional disorders in the brain.

What's wrong with the psychopath's brain

Empathy, guilt, and moral judgment come from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPC). Studies of people with bilateral damage to this structure have shown that it is extremely important for the emotional experience of difficult moral situations.

Participants with a damaged BMPK were always guided only by reason, even when it came to difficult situations such as the need to kill a person with their own hands in order to avoid greater evil.

When scientists from the University of Wisconsin at Madison examined the brains of psychopathic criminals, dysfunction was found in this structure, or rather, in its connections with the emotional center of the brain - the amygdala.

Another study of criminals showed that violent psychopaths have significantly reduced gray matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and the anterior end of the temporal lobe, the temporal pole. These structures are also responsible for empathy and guilt - feelings that are not familiar to psychopaths.

However, not being able to empathize is not a crime, and a person with such an anomaly does not necessarily have to kill, cheat, or rape. Moreover, psychopaths are among the respected members of society: scientists and heads of large corporations.

Other complex combinations of neurological activity are responsible for the antisocial behavior of psychopaths.

What makes a psychopath a criminal

In 2013, scientists conducted another study in the prison. Prisoners were shown pictures of physical pain and then asked to imagine what had happened to them or to other people.

When psychopaths presented their pain, they increased activity in areas of the brain responsible for pain empathy. These are the anterior insula, the middle part of the cingulate cortex, the somatosensory cortex, and the right amygdala. It was clear that psychopaths understand and feel the concept of pain when it comes to them.

When they were asked to imagine how it hurt other people, the brain activity was very different. This time, the areas responsible for empathy for pain were not activated. Instead, activity increased in the ventral striatum, the brain structure that controls reward and motivation.

Researchers have suggested that psychopaths enjoy the sight of someone else's pain.

However, this is not enough for a person to decide on violence and risk ending up in prison. To commit a crime, a psychopath must either want it too much and not control his behavior, or poorly understand the consequences of his own actions. This is exactly what was found in further experiments.

How waiting for the reward blows away

The striatum is an important part of the brain's reward system. She participates in the emergence of motivation for action when we want something. However, we will not achieve what we want if it leads to bad consequences.

This ability is thanks to the prefrontal cortex: it helps to control our actions and suppress impulsive behavior. Thanks to the prefrontal cortex, a person can evaluate the consequences of their decision and refuse what they want.

This mechanism works much worse in psychopaths than in normal people. In highly psychopathic criminals, the connections between the ventral striatum and the prefrontal cortex are disrupted.

Dangerous psychopaths are so anticipating the reward that they cannot control their behavior. Their desires are too strong for the prefrontal cortex to handle.

Moreover, due to the oppressed connection between the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, they are not able to realize what their actions will lead to. The immediate reward overshadows their consciousness, and further consequences, such as imprisonment, do not matter.

Does this mean psychopaths are not to blame?

American judges tend to give more lenient sentences when there is a biochemical cause for the psychopathy. In such a situation, it seems that a person bears less personal responsibility for what he has done. However, this is little consolation for the people affected by the action and its future victims.

The term "psychopathy" is not used in Russia. In the international classification of diseases, this disorder is numbered F60.2 - dissocial personality disorder - and at the moment there is no effective treatment.

Probably the only thing that can be done is to recognize the psychopath in time and stay away from him.