Brain Development of the Psychopath

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Brain Development of the Psychopath Session 5
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MRI pix
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (FMRI)
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The Male Brain and ASP
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Pruning MRI
Time-lapse imagery of brain age 5 to 20
Use it or lose it!
Note red shows more gray matter while blue shows
less gray matter. Gray matter wanes as the brain
matures and neurons are pruned. Areas for basic
function mature early higher executive functions
later.
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Normal teen
Normal Teen Behavior Duh!

• Forgetful leaves behind and loses things, late
  on assignments
• Impulsive, risk taking, reckless
• Poor judgment, poor decisions, cant foresee
  consequences
• Gangly, awkward, clumsy
• Misunderstanding, misreading, misinterpretations
• Stay up late, cant get up early
• Moody, overly sensitive, hysterics
• Shocking dress, tattoos, piercing
• Alcohol, drug use
• Argue with logical and rational reasoning
• Messy rooms, lockers, notebooks

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Reading emotion
Reading Emotion Normal Youth

• Youth seem to do nothing but socialize, yet are
  poor readers of emotion
• Undeveloped prefrontal cortex plays role in
  assessment of social relations, planning, and
  impulse control in social relations
• Compared with adults (100), teens (50) have
  greater difficulty correctly identifying
  emotional facial expression
• This confusion may lead to misinterpretation
  inappropriate reaction
• Girls somewhat more accurate than boys boys
  misinterpret cues
• Deep emotional relationships comes from ability
  to read subtle cues
• When one observes a close friend receiving a
  shock, although the sensory cortex does not
  activate, the emotional one does

When reading emotion, teens (left) rely more on
the amygdala, while adults (right) rely more on
the frontal cortex.

• Conduct Disordered Youth
• Errors in evaluating motive and intent
• Misinterpret social cues
• Attribute hostile intentions
• Tease others but respond negatively to others
• Abnormal standards and expectations regarding own
  behavior

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Sleep stages
8 hours of sleep required
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Frontal brain
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Phineas gage
The strange case of Phineas Gage

• Gage was a railroad construction supervisor in
  1848 when a tamping rod was driven through his
  skull by an explosion
• The tamping rod severed the connections in the
  frontal area
• Prior to the accident he was a moral,
  hardworking, sensitive, conscientious,
  intelligent, and well liked
• Following the accident, his personality changed
  lying, swearing, fighting, drinking,
  extravagance, seizure prone,
  and antisocial

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Stroop color word test
Undersocialized subjects have more difficulty
than control subjects in naming the color,
suggesting frontal lobe involvement (Waid Orne,
1982)
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Mirror drawing
Conflicting messages mirror drawing apparatus
Help parents (and staff) appreciate learning
disabilities and related perceptual conflicts
that are similar to delays in brain development
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Stress
Effects of Stress Trauma on the Brain

• Long term exposure to stress violence produces
  high
  level of fear hormone, cortisol (reduces
  connections
  may shrink hippocampus)
• High stress homes, multitasking technology
  (computer games)
  more often produce short attention (ADHD)
• Verbal abuse (repeated yelling, scolded,
  criticized) has adverse
  effects on the limbic
  (emotional) system, likely through stress
  pathways
• Physical and/or sexual abuse increases limbic
  system dysfunction including olfactory
  hallucinations, visual disturbances, déjà vu,
  jamais vu
• Repeated recollection and obsessing can intensify
  the stress effects
• Physical/sexual abuse or neglect is associated
  with decrease in the size of the hippocampus
  (working memory) in adulthood
• Stress tends to short-circuit frontal lobe
  processing (what little there is) and switch to
  emotional processing (resulting in
  over-sensitivity)
• Such impairments may make the challenges of
  school even more stressful a vicious cycle

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PET images of the brain of a normal person
(left), a murderer with deprived background
(middle) and a murderer with non-deprived
background (right). Areas in red and yellow show
a higher metabolic activity, and in black and
blue of lower metabolic activity. The brain of a
sociopath (right) has a very low activity in many
areas, but which is strikingly absent in the
frontal area (upper part of the images). Images
by Adrian Raine, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, USA.
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Psychopath brain
The Brain of the Psychopath

• 64 of violent people have abnormal
  
  frontal lobes, 50 brain atrophy, 40
  
  EEG abnormalities
• 84 victims of severe physical or sexual
  
  abuse
• Ratio of brain abnormalities of violent to
  normals is 311
• Normal people blink to a startling noise when
  viewing an unpleasant picture compared to a
  pleasant one psychopaths dont
• Brains may not be able to construct an emotional
  facsimile (empathy) of others discomfort
• Less able to process deep semantic meaning of
  words emotional significance of events
• Show less response to startle, lower GSR to
  expected painful stimuli, less fear of common
  hazards, higher pain thresholds, less avoidance
  of shock-punished errors in learning task

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Drugs
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Brain serotonin
Antisocial behavior the brain

• Impulsive, violent emotions appears to be a
  failure of emotional regulation
• ASP shows impairment in the orbito-frontal cortex
  (impulse control, judgment, tact) and its
  connections with anterior cingulate cortex
  (conflict coping) amygdala (fear anger)
• Abnormalities in serotonin function
• Early neglect (sensory deprivation) trauma
  abuse affects the development of the brain
• During 1st three years the brain grows rapidly,
  later prunes unused areas
• Result poor impulse control, lack of
  socialization, poor empathy, reactivity

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serotonin
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Lykken study startle
Normal people show fear, startle, and avoidance
reactions to painful stimuli psychopaths dont
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Non-reactivity to Emotional Stimulation
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Oppositional Defiance
Conduct Disorder
Psychopathy

• Glibness/superficial charm (1)
• Grandiose sense of self-worth (1)
• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
  (1)
• Pathological lying (1)
• Cunning/manipulative (1)
• Lack of remorse or guilt (1)
• Shallow affect (1)
• Callous/lack of empathy (1)
• Parasitic lifestyle (2)
• Poor behavioral controls (2)
• Early behavior problems (2)
• Lack of realistic, long-term plans (2)
• Impulsivity (2)
• Irresponsibility (2)
• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom (2)
• Juvenile delinquency (2)
• Revocation of conditional release (2)
• Promiscuous sexual behavior (T)
• Many short-term relationships (T)

• Bullies, threatens, intimidates
• Initiates physical fights
• Used weapon that can cause serious physical harm
• Physically cruel to people
• Physically cruel to animals
• Stolen while confronting victim
• Forced sexual activity
• Deliberately engaged in fire setting with
  intentional damage
• Deliberately destroyed property
• Broken into someones house, building, car
• Lies to obtain goods or favors or avoid
  obligations
• Stolen nontrivial items without confronting
  victim
• Stays out at night despite parental prohibitions
• Run away from home overnight twice while living
  in parent/surrogate home
• Truant from school

• Loses temper
• Argues with adults
• Actively defies or refuses to comply with adults
  requests or rules
• Deliberately annoys people
• Blames others for his/hers mistakes
• Touchy or easily annoyed
• Angry or resentful
• Spiteful or vindictive

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PCL-YV
Psychopathy Checklist Youth Version
Factor 1
Factor 2
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Student risk screening
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