Good Lifestyle

Empathy

"A marked lack of empathy is a mastery characteristic of people with psychopathy", describes Jean Tecty, a famous expert on empathy neuroscience. He is also Professor Irving B. Harris in psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago in Illinois. He blames the lack of empathy as responsible for the creation of psychopaths.

The ventrated prefrontal cortex

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex presented above is the main point where we take our moral decisions. This image was designed by Patrick J. Lynch which is a medical illustrator. Many researchers talked about a neural empathy base, quite disappeared in the psychopathic brain. This is what causes so calleux psychopaths.

Lower gray matter

The experts say there is a problem with the mirror neuron system in psychopaths. These neurons in a healthy brain are able to understand the actions and implications of others and ourselves when we do it. There is also a much less important amount of gray matter in the so-called brain paraalimbe system - the conglomerate of brain regions that maintain self-control, emotions, setting up goals and be motivated during stressful times.

Digitization of detainees

For a few years back, Professor Treety has made some experiences and a lot of research on psychopaths, who discover that this simply does not have neural "equipment" for empathy. With his team, he examined the brains of 121 detainees held in an American security prison in which they were exposed to painful situations. The study participants were also tested with the revised hare psychopathic checklist (PCL-R).

Highly psychopathic

If the subjects seemed to be "highly psychopathic", they were invited to assume them to feel pain, parts of the empathy of "light up" in the functional machine (MRI) like the anterior isolation, the Cortex of anterior mid-cargote, somatosensory cortex, and the right amygdala. But when they were asked to imagine this pain on other people, she did not go on.

No emotions for others

It was also found that the islanders of the participants and the ventramed pre-financial cortins (VMPFC) did not take connection when they requested to imagine the perspective of another person. The VMPFC or the "social hub" of the human brain is what makes the empathic decisions that means it judges our actions and its effects on us and others. Unfortunately, psychopaths did not prove human emotion when this test was executed.

Bad decision makers?

People argued that psychopaths are not bad at heart, but are just bad decision makers. Joshua Buckholtz, Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Ma, had tests on 49 prison detainees where they were invited to choose between getting less money immediately or more money later. The ventral striatum which is a brain region has become instantly very active among participants who appeared very sociopathic on the PCR-L scale.

Low level of love hormones

Weak oxytocin sometimes causes low empathy according to researchers. This problem with empathy can be correlated with low levels of "love" hormone and the role of VMPFC in psychopathy. The VMPFC, says Buckholtz and colleagues, is the Ventral Stratumum Controller for Reward Treatment. If we receive $ 100,000 to kill someone, our VMPFC would inform the ventral striatum, "hang a minute! You may want to re-evaluate this compromise - is it worth it to take someone else's life for money? And can you withstand the consequences of your actions? "But Buckholtz's research has discovered that VMPFC and ventral striatum do not interact.

Buckholtz Explanation

Buckholtz suggests: "The striatum attributes values ​​to different actions without context a lot temporal. We need the pre-front cortex to make potential judgments [about] how an action will affect us in the future -" If I do it, So this bad thing will happen. " "It explains:" [i] F You break this link in any person, they will start making bad choices because they will not have the information that would otherwise guide their decision-making for more adaptive purposes. [The Psychopathians are not foreigners, they are people who make bad decisions. "

Testosterone to blame?

Most of the research work carried out by different researchers have all emphasized defective brain circuits. So, what should be blamed for this question in some areas of the brain? Many blame masculine sex hormone testosterone as the main reason. Professor Karin Roelofs, at the Donders Institute of Radboud University in the Netherlands, made a study that proved that the tonsil and the prefrontal cortex in the brain are not connected.

More men than women

Most studies have in fact discovered that there are more psychopaths in men than women, testosterone could therefore be a very heavy factor. "Psychopathic individuals", "the claims of the study" are notorious for their aggressive behavior directed towards their controlled objective. Yet, during social challenges, they often have uncontrolled emotional behavior. "Professor Roelofs says it's a" paradoxical aspect of psychopathy ". Researchers hope to prove that there is a" potential imbalance of testosterone function ". So is it treated?

Incurable but treatable

If psychopathy is caused by neurons, does it mean that there is no therapeutic means to reduce it or treat it? There has been evidence in prisons it can be rehabilitated. It has often been contested that psychopaths have attention deficits. If other mental disorders can be treated, why can not psychopathy being treated? A huge difficulty is that psychopaths tend to be safe from any type of punishment. The disconnection between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex in their brain left them without emotion.

New reforms

People working at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center (MJTC) in Madison, WI, designed the decompression model file that is a cognitive-behavioral intervention that rewards good action, large or small. Their rewards vary and go small things like getting dessert with video game privileges. This has definitely made a very positive impact on the participants.

Successful interventions

The MJTC even allowed to escape a statement: "The program has had the greatest impact on serious violent offenses, thus reducing the risk of incidence of about half. The youth of the treatment group were greater than [6] as fewer likely to engage in the violence of the Felonies that the Youth of the Comparison Group. "Young people who have not had the treatment of MJTC murdered 16 people while no homicide was committed by those of the Intervention Group. Lindsay Aleta Sewall who works at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada says that "a growing collection of studies has found that psychopathic offenders who have reduced their risk as a result of treatment, demonstrate lower recidivism rates."

Conclusions

Sewall has a good point, saying that even if the participants have a high score on the PCL-R psychopathy balance after treatment, it does not necessarily imply that the treatment was not fruitful. It's just the recurrence. The most important thing is to handle it rather than finding a cure. Professor Buckholtz describes: "The same kind of short-term and impulsive decision-making that we see in psychopathic people has also been noted in compulsive trop-size and drug addicts." Hope with the appropriate treatment, a psychopath can one day drive a normal life.