Psychopathic Violent Offenders’ Brains Can’t Understand Punishment

MRI scanning has allowed researchers from the King’s College London to analyze how those with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) respond cognitively to punishment within the legal system to determine if traditional correctional institutions address their pathology correctly. The study, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, describes how diagnosed sociopaths who were currently incarcerated were tested (compared to a control group)  with a game designed to shift an action from positive to negative, with a point deduction in order to study how the individual responded upon realizing their actions were no longer acceptable. “We observed reductions in gray matter volumes bilaterally in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles relative to the other offenders and to the non-offenders. Abnormalities were also found in white matter fiber tracts in the dorsal cingulum, linking the posterior cingulate cortex to the medial prefrontal cortex that were specifically associated with the lack of empathy that is typical of psychopathy,” said the author of the study. While normal prisoners reacted to the rule change by processing it as an obstacle, sociopaths appeared unable to accept the change and expressed outrage while continuing behavior on the principle that they were not wrong. With ASPD diagnosis becoming more common in the legal system, this study questions if traditional methods are capable of truly reforming sociopaths with current methods. To learn more about this study, click here.