According to a new study, psychopathic individuals have a larger striatum region in their brain.
Psychopathic persons have a 10% bigger striatum, a collection of neurons in the subcortical basal ganglia of the forebrain, than typical people, according to neuroscientists who used MRI scans. This is a definite biological differential between psychopaths and non-psychopathic individuals.
A biological differential between psychopaths and non-psychopaths has been revealed by neuroscientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore), the University of Pennsylvania, and California State University. Scientists revealed that the striatum, a forebrain region, was 10% larger in psychopathic persons compared to a control group of people with mild or no psychopathic features using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.
People with psychopathic tendencies, often known as psychopaths, have an arrogant and antisocial personality. This is marked by a lack of responsibility for their acts, a lack of empathy for others, and, in some cases, criminal inclinations.
The striatum, which is part of the forebrain, the cerebrum's subcortical area, coordinates many aspects of cognition, including motor and action planning, decision-making, motivation, reinforcement, and reward perception.
Psychopaths have a hyperactive striatum, according to previous studies, but the effect of its size on behavior has yet to be established. A major biological difference exists between persons who have psychopathic inclinations and those who do not, according to new study. While not all persons with psychopathic characteristics end up breaking the law, and not all criminals meet the psychopathy requirements, there is a strong link. Psychopathy is also linked to more aggressive conduct, according to the findings.
Understanding the role of genetics in antisocial and criminal conduct may assist to strengthen existing behavioral theories as well as guide policy and treatment alternatives. The neuroscientists used the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, a psychological evaluation instrument to detect the existence of psychopathic tendencies in individuals, to scan the brains of 120 volunteers in the United States and interview them.
“Our study’s results help advance our knowledge about what underlies antisocial behavior such as psychopathy. We find that in addition to social environmental influences, it is important to consider that there can be differences in biology, in this case, the size of brain structures, between antisocial and non-antisocial individuals," said Assistant Professor Olivia Choy, a neurocriminologist from NTU's School of Social Sciences who co-authored the paper.
“Because biological traits, such as the size of one’s striatum, can be inherited to a child from a parent, these findings give added support to neurodevelopmental perspectives of psychopathy – that the brains of these offenders do not develop normally throughout childhood and adolescence,” said co-author Professor Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania's Departments of Criminology, Psychiatry, and Psychology.