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Section of Brain Maturation, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Section of Neuroscience and Emotion, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Division of Mental Health, St Georges University of London
Oxleas National Health Services (NHS) Trust, Kent
Section of Brain Maturation, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, Institute of Psychiatry, London
South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, London
South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and Forensic Mental Health Science, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Section of Neuroscience and Emotion, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK and Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
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
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
ChecklistRevised 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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