Neurological mechanisms in Emotional Processes of Psychopathy

描述（由申请人提供）：在神经学层面对移情的研究提供了对组成过程的洞察，这些过程使我们能够分享彼此的情绪，与需要帮助的人产生共鸣，并以有利于他人的方式行事，而不是自我。那些公然无视他人幸福的人，表现得好像他们没有同理心一样，通常被认为是精神病患者。与其他精神疾病相比，人们对与精神病有关的神经认知系统知之甚少，目前还没有有效的治疗方案。对这种疾病的关注迫在眉睫：精神变态的罪犯往往是惯犯和暴力罪犯，他们的犯罪给社会造成的损失每年达到数千亿美元。确定精神病患者共情缺陷的性质将进一步指导临床领域的干预和治疗策略。本研究的目的是探讨共情和内隐情绪加工组成过程功能和功能障碍的神经学机制。研究对象为120名在囚罪犯，他们被分为低、中、高三组，并与来自社区的40名对照者进行比较。本项目利用移动核磁共振系统，在监狱现场收集功能磁共振成像、结构和扩散张量成像、自主神经系统测量和行为反应。扫描仪中收集的任务将针对受试者对他人痛苦和情绪的感知和解释。初步的试验数据表明，目前的理论，如那些假设杏仁核或其他边缘结构慢性功能障碍的理论，可能并不能准确地描述精神病患者的实际缺陷，因为到目前为止，在精神病患者群体中，对我们的情绪刺激的反应中发现了不同的激活模式，包括杏仁核和纹状体的活动。除了揭示精神病中共情功能障碍的本质外，该项目还将为依赖于分布式信息处理网络的共情模型提供直接评估。更好地了解共情机制对检查和理解反社会行为障碍个体具有重要意义，但与之互补的是，了解由反共情行为模式定义的人群中共情的哪些神经成分仍然完整，哪些神经成分不同，将有助于明确理解健康成人共情行为的组成过程。这个转化项目将社会心理学与认知和情感神经科学联系起来，在系统和行为层面上揭示一个代价高昂的社会问题的神经基础。这项研究的发现将扩展我们对涉及情感体验、表达和调节的过程和机制的认识。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The study of empathy at a neurological level has provided insight into the component processes that enable us to share each other's emotions, resonate with a person in need, and act in ways that benefit the other before the self. Individuals who act with blatant disregard for the well-being of others and behave as if they do not experience empathy are often characterized as psychopaths. Compared to other psychiatric disorders, little is known about the neurocognitive systems implicated in psychopathy, and there are currently no effective treatment protocols. Attention to the disorder is urgent: psychopathic criminals tend to be recidivistic and violent offenders, and the cost of their crimes to society reaches hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Determination of the nature of empathic deficits in psychopathic individuals will further guide intervention and treatment strategies in the clinical arena. The goal of this project is to explore the neurological mechanisms that underpin the function and dysfunction of the component processes of empathy and implicit emotion processing in 120 incarcerated offenders stratified into low, medium, and high scorers on Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R, 1991), along with 40 matched controls from the community. This project utilizes a mobile MRI system, which is brought to prisons to collect functional magnetic resonance imaging, structural and diffusion tensor imaging, autonomic nervous system measurements, and behavioral responses on-site at the correctional facilities. The tasks collected in the scanner will target the subjects' perception and interpretation of pain and emotions in others. Preliminary pilot data indicate that current theories, such as those hypothesizing chronic hypofunctioning of the amygdala or other limbic structures, may not be an accurate representation of actual deficits in psychopathy, since different patterns of activation, including amygdala and striatum activity, are so far seen in the psychopath group in response to our emotional stimuli. As well as shedding light onto the nature of empathy dysfunction within psychopathy, this project will provide a direct assessment for a model of empathy that relies on distributed information processing networks. A better knowledge of the mechanisms involved in empathy offers important implications for the examination and understanding of individuals with antisocial behavioral disorders, but complementarily, understanding which neural components of empathy are still intact and which differ in populations that are defined by patterns of counter-empathic behavior will help crystallize the understanding of the component processes which contribute to empathic behaviors in healthy adults. This translational project bridges social psychology and cognitive and affective neuroscience to bring to light the neural underpinnings of a costly societal problem at a systems and behavioral level. The findings of this research will expand our knowledge on the processes and mechanisms involved in the experience, expression, and regulation of emotion. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Psychopathy is a personality disorder with considerable negative impact on the welfare of society at large. Recently, interest in understanding and treating the disorder has surged, but without proper access and methods to ascertain the underlying biological and psychological differences behind psychopathy, treatments and interventions may be poorly informed. The proposed translational project investigates the component processes underlying empathy (a core feature of healthy interpersonal sensitivity that is deficient in psychopathy) and implicit emotion processing to examine these core faculties in incarcerated psychopaths, using magnetic resonance imaging. It marks the beginning of a systematic and empirical course of study designed to pinpoint the nature of empathic deficits in psychopathy such that directed targets for intervention and therapy can be effectively designed and implemented.