Psychopaths: found the biological difference that sets them apart

One of the most studied personality disorders is the psychopathy, but there is still no clear picture. As with other types of developmental disorders, there is no single cause. Study research shows a complicated interplay of genetic and environmental factors that go together. Such factors can occur in biological differences between psychopathic and non-psychopathic people. Here’s a new study that seems to have uncovered these biological differences.

Neuroscientists scanned the brains of 120 American volunteers with MRI. Each of the participants was interviewed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, a gimmick to determine the presence of psychopathy.

Thanks to brain scans of the patients who scored higher, the researchers had a response. They even noted that an area of ​​the forebrain called the striatum was 10% larger in people with psychopathic conditions. The others, on the other hand, reported such small or null features. These are the words of the researchers:

The results of our research help improve our understanding of what underlies antisocial behavior, such as psychopathy. We find that in addition to environmental and social influences, it is important to consider that there may be differences in biology, in this case in the size of brain structures, between antisocial and non-antisocial individuals.

The striatum is located in a wide subcortical part of the brain It coordinates cognition, including decision-making, reinforcement, motivation, and reward perception. The research study is the first to correlate the influence of the striatum on psychopathic traits.

As a child grows, the striatum gets smaller. Some aspects of psychopathy may be due to differences in brain development.