Empathic responsiveness in amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex in youths with psychopathic traits.

BACKGROUND: Psychopathic traits are associated with increases in antisocial behaviors such as aggression and are characterized by reduced empathy for others' distress. This suggests that psychopathic traits may also impair empathic pain sensitivity. However, whether psychopathic traits affect responses to the pain of others versus the self has not been previously assessed. METHOD: We used whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activation in 14 adolescents with oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder and psychopathic traits, as well as 21 healthy controls matched on age, gender, and intelligence. Activation in structures associated with empathic pain perception was assessed as adolescents viewed photographs of pain-inducing injuries. Adolescents imagined either that the body in each photograph was their own or that it belonged to another person. Behavioral and neuroimaging data were analyzed using random-effects analysis of variance. RESULTS: Youths with psychopathic traits showed reduced activity within regions associated with empathic pain as the depicted pain increased. These regions included rostral anterior cingulate cortex, ventral striatum (putamen), and amygdala. Reductions in amygdala activity particularly occurred when the injury was perceived as occurring to another. Empathic pain responses within both amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate cortex were negatively correlated with the severity of psychopathic traits as indexed by PCL:YV scores. CONCLUSIONS: Youths with psychopathic traits show less responsiveness in regions implicated in the affective response to another's pain as the perceived intensity of this pain increases. Moreover, this reduced responsiveness appears to predict symptom severity.

Reduced amygdala-orbitofrontal connectivity during moral judgments in youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate dysfunction in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits during a moral judgment task. Fourteen adolescents with psychopathic traits and 14 healthy controls were assessed using fMRI while they categorized illegal and legal behaviors in a moral judgment implicit association task. fMRI data were then analyzed using random-effects analysis of variance and functional connectivity. Youths with psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala activity when making judgments about legal actions and reduced functional connectivity between the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex during task performance. These results suggest that psychopathic traits are associated with amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction. This dysfunction may relate to previous findings of disrupted moral judgment in this population.

Adolescents with psychopathic traits report reductions in physiological responses to fear.

BACKGROUND: Psychopathy is characterized by profound affective deficits, including shallow affect and reduced empathy. Recent research suggests that these deficits may apply particularly to negative emotions, or to certain negative emotions such as fear. Despite increased focus on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of psychopathy, little is known about how psychopathy is associated with emotional deficits across a range of emotions. In addition, the relationship between psychopathy and the subjective experience of emotion has not yet been assessed. METHODS: Eighteen 10-17-year-olds with psychopathic traits and 24 comparison children and adolescents reported on their subjective experiences of emotion during five recent emotionally evocative life events, following a paradigm developed by Scherer and colleagues (Scherer & Wallbott, 1994). Group comparisons were then performed to assess variations in subjective experiences across emotions. RESULTS: As predicted, psychopathy was associated with reductions in the subjective experience of fear relative to other emotions. Children and adolescents with psychopathic traits reported fewer symptoms associated with sympathetic nervous system arousal during fear-evoking experiences. CONCLUSIONS: Rather than being related to uniformly impoverished emotional experience, psychopathic traits appear to be associated with greater deficits in subjective experiences of fear. This pattern of responding supports and extends previous observations that psychopathy engenders deficits in fear learning, physiological responses to threats, and the recognition of fear in others.

Increased interestingness of extraneous details in a multimedia science presentation leads to decreased learning.

In Experiment 1, students received an illustrated booklet, PowerPoint presentation, or narrated animation that explained 6 steps in how a cold virus infects the human body. The material included 6 high-interest details mainly about the role of viruses in sex or death (high group) or 6 low-interest details consisting of facts and health tips about viruses (low group). The low group outperformed the high group across all 3 media on a subsequent test of problem-solving transfer (d = .80) but not retention (d = .05). In Experiment 2, students who studied a PowerPoint lesson explaining the steps in how digestion works performed better on a problem-solving transfer test if the lesson contained 7 low-interest details rather than 7 high-interest details (d = .86), but the groups did not differ on retention (d = .26). In both experiments, as the interestingness of details was increased, student understanding decreased (as measured by transfer). Results are consistent with a cognitive theory of multimedia learning, in which highly interesting details sap processing capacity away from deeper cognitive processing of the core material during learning.