In this article we will present an extract of a book we have read in a French magazine, “Cerveau et Psycho”. Each month, in this magazine, we can find some short news about neurosciences and psychology research; it features research digests, clinical situations and experimentation’s results (present or past, new or well-known).
First of all, the excerpt we will talk about is from number 110 from May 2019. It deals with the brain of psychopaths and it is extracted from a French translation of the Abigail Marsh’s book, “Altruistes et Psychopathes”. Abigail Marsh is a psychology teacher at Georgetown University.
On the one hand, she gives a definition of what is psychopathy. According to her, psychopathy is a mental disorder which deprives human brain from ability to be compassionate. She states that a lot of psychopaths are violent but not all of them. If they behave violently, they chose it, in an intentional and a thoughtful way and not because they are angry. Also she says that psychopathy is a subject of interest for lots of people. They often try to find the detail which would betray the psychopath, even if they were not all mistreated in their childhood and they seemed to be perfectly ordinary people.
On the other hand, she explains her thesis results. In 2004, she demonstrated that people who are able to detect fear in facial expression in a sensitive way are more likely to help others. She also used James Blair’s findings, the violence inhibition mechanism (VIM) which, according to him is the mechanism preventing people from engaging in violent behaviors. Under that theory, this mechanism would be defective in psychopaths.
To go further, Abigail and her research team used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to look at brains of psychopathic teenagers, precisely the amygdala, in the prefrontal cortex. This organ allows, among other things, the facial recognition of fear. They found out that the right amygdala of this population was not activated when they were looking at faces of people with intense fear. On the contrary, on the control group which was not psychopathic, the activation of the right amygdala was increased in the same situation. These findings help to understand why the fear expression of people is not effective to inhibit psychopath’s violence.
Another study of Abigail Marsh showed that people with psychopathic traits think there is no arm to scare others or to threaten them. She adds that they continue to behave with violence because they learn that violence can be useful to obtain what they want. And if someone cannot understand what fear is, they have no capacity of empathy or understanding of the experience of fear in other people. Also, she studied functional MRI on people she called the extraordinary altruists. These people are the opposite of psychopaths if we consider the care they take for others, they can hurt themselves for the benefit of others. Abigail and her team found out that in extraordinary altruistic people, the right amygdala is 8 percent bigger than those of the control group. Seeing other people suffering affect them more and they demonstrate an extraordinary compassion.
This article shows us the evolution of research in the criminal field by closely associating neurosciences, technology and psychology which echoes with some of our lessons in ethics about jurisdiction and the evolution of psychological care possibilities for prisoners, such as rapists. This question the feasibility of further research in the medical field, maybe to find a way to activate the right amygdala or, at least find out why it does not work.
As a conclusion, we would say that this subject makes us even more curious about brain functioning and we will be looking forward to learn other new discoveries. In a nutshell, we hope that these research will be useful for justice and that justice may seize the conclusion of these findings. It can impact the decision of the judge and also the program of psychological care for some prisoners. In some articles and when we discuss with people around us, there are non-violent psychopaths such as politicians who make people work without taking much their needs and their social demands in consideration because they behave as if they were deaf and as if they are enable to feel compassion. For some people, politicians are killing us without violence, is it the new form of psychopathy in the 21st century ?
Vocabulary :
Features = caractéristiques
An excerpt = un extrait
To deprive from = priver de
To betray = trahir
Echoes = échos
Mistreated = Maltraité
To seize something = se saisir de quelque chose
Deaf = sourd
Bibliography : Marsh, A. (2019). Dans le cerveau des psychopathes. Cerveau et Psycho, 110, 36-41.
Marie Richard and Iris Gogeon