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Facial emotion processing in criminal psychopathy

Preliminary functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Section of Brain Maturation, Institute of Psychiatry, London

SIMON SURGULADZE, DSc

Section of Neuroscience and Emotion, Institute of Psychiatry, London

NIGEL TUNSTALL, MRCPsych

Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London

GILL MEZEY, FRCPsych

Division of Mental Health, St George’s University of London

DOMINIC BEER, MD, MRCPsych

Oxleas National Health Services (NHS) Trust, Kent

ANITA AMBIKAPATHY, MRCPsych and DENE ROBERTSON, MRCGP, MRCPsych

Section of Brain Maturation, Institute of Psychiatry, London

VINCENT GIAMPIETRO, PhD and MICHAEL J. BRAMMER, PhD

Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, Institute of Psychiatry, London

AMORY CLARKE, PhD and JOHN DOWSETT, PhD

South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, London

TOM FAHY, MD, FRCPsych

South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and Forensic Mental Health Science, Institute of Psychiatry, London

MARY L. PHILLIPS, MD

Section of Neuroscience and Emotion, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK and Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

DECLAN G. MURPHY, MD, MRCPsych

Section of Brain Maturation, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK

Correspondence: Dr Declan Murphy, Section of Brain Maturation, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. Email: D.Murphy{at}iop.kcl.ac.uk

Declaration of interest None.

Background It has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have deficits in processing distress cues (e.g. fearful facial expressions).

Aims Toinvestigate brain functionwhen individuals with psychopathy and a control group process facial emotion.

Method Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging we compared six people scoring 25 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised and nine non-psychopathic healthy volunteers during an implicit emotion processing task using fearful, happy and neutral faces.

Results The psychopathy group showed significantly less activation than the control group in fusiform and extrastriate cortices when processing both facial emotions. However, emotion type affected response pattern. Both groups increased fusiform and extrastriate cortex activation when processing happy faces compared with neutral faces, butthis increase was significantly smaller in the psychopathy group. In contrast, when processing fearful faces compared with neutral faces, the control group showed increased activation but the psychopathy group decreased activation in the fusiform gyrus.

Conclusions People with psychopathy have biological differences from controls when processing facial emotion, and the pattern of response differs according to emotion type.

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