Brains of Psychopaths Differ from Normal Ones

Investigators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) discovered in a new study that psychopaths display brain structures that are observably different from those of normal people.

Experts showed that an area of the brain involved in underlying feelings such as guilt and sympathy, called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), was not that well tied to the amygdala, a region coding fear and anxiety, as well as the flight-or-fight response.

“Those two structures in the brain, which are believed to regulate emotion and social behavior, seem to not be communicating as they should,” says UWM expert Michael Koenigs. The study was conducted using an imaging technique known as diffusion tensor images (DTI).

Functional Magnetic Resonance Image (fMRI) was then used to augment DTI datasets with information about how blood was flowing between the two areas of the brain. The technique confirmed reduced blood flow, hinting that the team's conclusion was correct, PsychCentral reports.