Multimodal Imaging of Social Emotion and Decision Making in Psychopathy

描述(申请人提供)：精神变态是一种人格障碍，包括人际关系、情感和行为特征，这些特征导致了针对他人的社会违规行为所定义的生活方式。这些社会违法行为通常被描述为“道德侵犯”，或故意实施的有害行为，如偷窃或造成身体或情感伤害，而不关心给他人造成的痛苦和痛苦。有人提出，精神变态个体在道德上的不敏感倾向可能部分源于精神变态人格特征的普遍缺乏情绪反应。精神病态个体在观看他人处于困境中时的自主神经反应性降低(Blair，1999)，并且在观看情绪刺激时与情绪处理相关的大脑区域的活动减少(Kiehl等人，2001)。申请人最近进行的一项功能磁共振成像(FMRI)初步研究发现，健康对照组中自我报告的精神病态特征与内侧前额叶皮质的活动呈负相关，内侧前额叶皮质是参与情绪和决策整合的大脑区域，而个人则根据视觉描述的道德违规的严重程度做出决定。这项拟议研究的目标是将这些关于亚临床精神病的发现推广到被诊断为精神病的个人。本研究将通过整合fMRI和事件相关电位(ERP)研究精神病患者和非精神病患者的道德加工来扩展先前的道德研究。思维研究所获得了一台专门用于被监禁人群的移动式核磁共振扫描仪，这为检查被监禁精神病患者道德加工的神经认知系统提供了前所未有的机会。鉴于精神病的社会成本与其他类似患病率的主要精神疾病相媲美，以及基于精神病个体的掠夺性本质对社会构成的普遍威胁，通过识别导致非道德行为的精神病中的神经功能障碍将获得相当大的好处。例如，这项研究可能会识别非道德行为的神经标记物，这些标记物可以通过治疗技术进行靶向。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Psychopathy is a personality disorder comprised of interpersonal, affective and behavioral characteristics that contribute to a lifestyle defined by social transgressions directed against others. These social transgressions are often described as 'moral violations', or harmful actions such as stealing or causing physical or emotional injury that are committed intentionally and without concern for the pain and suffering caused to others. It has been suggested that the morally insensitive tendencies of the psychopathic individual may stem, in part, from the general lack of emotional reactivity that characterizes psychopathic personality. Psychopathic individuals show decreased autonomic reactivity when viewing others in distress (Blair, 1999) and reduced activity in brain regions associated with emotional processing when viewing emotional stimuli (Kiehl et al., 2001). A recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) pilot study conducted by the applicant found that self reported psychopathic traits in healthy controls were negatively associated with activity in medial prefrontal cortex, a brain region implicated in the integration of emotion and decision making, while individuals made decisions regarding the severity of visually depicted moral violations. The goal of the proposed research is to extend these findings regarding subclinical psychopathy to individuals diagnosed with psychopathy. This research will expand on prior morality research by integrating fMRI and event-related potential (ERP) investigations of moral processing in psychopathic and non-psychopathic individuals. The MIND Institute has acquired a mobile MRI scanner dedicated for use with incarcerated populations, providing an unprecedented opportunity to examine neurocognitive systems underlying moral processing in incarcerated psychopaths. Given that the societal cost of psychopathy rivals those of other major mental illnesses of similar prevalence, and the general threat posed to society based on the predatory nature of the psychopathic individual, there is considerable benefit to be gained by identifying neural dysfunction in psychopathy that contributes to amoral behavior. This research may, for instance, identify neural markers of amoral behavior that can be targeted with therapeutic techniques.