title: Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy.
abstract: Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with a profound lack of empathy. Neuroscientists have associated empathy and its interindividual variation with how strongly participants activate brain regions involved in their own actions, emotions and sensations while viewing those of others. Here we compared brain activity of 18 psychopathic offenders with 26 control subjects while viewing video clips of emotional hand interactions and while experiencing similar interactions. Brain regions involved in experiencing these interactions were not spontaneously activated as strongly in the patient group while viewing the video clips. However, this group difference was markedly reduced when we specifically instructed participants to feel with the actors in the videos. Our results suggest that psychopathy is not a simple incapacity for vicarious activations but rather reduced spontaneous vicarious activations co-existing with relatively normal deliberate counterparts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Groningen, University Medical Centre Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Harma
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Meffert
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gazzola
authors.forename: Johan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: den Boer
authors.forename: Arnold A J
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Bartels
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Keysers
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D057237:Criminals; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012938:Social Perception
keywords: empathy; functional MRI; psychopathy; vicarious responses