Criminal psychopathy a biological dysfunction

[Azur]

The last sentence is somewhat encouraging for its implications.


http://www(dot)himtimes.com/science&tech/science&tech.php?subaction=showfull&id=1165147505&archive=&start_from=&ucat=10&

Criminal psychopathy a biological dysfunction
Posted on 03 Dec 2006 by HimTimes

London, Dec 03: A biological defect in the way blood flows in the brain rather than a psychological defect could be one reason why some people become criminal psychopaths, a new study shows.

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London monitored the emotional responses of six men who had committed repeat offences such as attempted murder, rape with strangulation and grievous bodily harm.

"We've never been able to look directly in the brain before and what we found is that when psychopaths were exposed to frightened faces the distress cue didn't increase the psychopath's blood flow. It decreased it," Declan Murphy, a professor of psychiatry at the institute, told news agencies.

He added psychopaths might not stop their attacks because they may have learned to dampen their brain's response to other peoples' distress signals.

All six subjects scored highly on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a test which looks for the presence of cunning, manipulative or exploitative behaviors as well as lack of guilt or remorse.

The results were published on Friday in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Their scans were compared to nine healthy volunteers who were also shown images of fearful, happy and neutral faces.

Tom Fahy, professor of forensic mental health and co-author of the study, said the condition may be inherited or acquired through very deprived and abusive childhoods.

He added the findings of the study opened possibilities for new treatments other than counseling therapies and could be used to identify people who had a higher risk of re-offending.

"Psychopaths currently respond pretty poorly to treatment but this biological problem could be used as a marker for people who say they have recovered but actually haven't," Murphy said.

This article is cross-linked to this thread, I just noticed.

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=4235

 

[atreides]

Yeah,but different presentations, this one is much more interesting. However how does one know it's a dysfunction proper?

 

[Azur]

Yeah,but different presentations, this one is much more interesting. However how does one know it's a dysfunction proper?

Dysfuntion implies a variation of a baseline of certain functionality. How is normal defined if a group is split 50/50, let's say? Would it be objectively reached through observation, a willed preference, or is the word of acclaimed "experts" enough to set the so-called baseline?

To paraphrase: "I come not for peace, but to carry a sword".


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[MaskedAvatar]

The topic led me to believe that the "biological dysfunction" being discussed was an extension of age-old nature vs nurture thinking.

Then it becomes apparent that the blood flow measures tested did not respond in expected ways to cues of distress in other people. A verifiable and replicable finding.

Then "Tom Fahy, professor of forensic mental health and co-author of the study, said the condition may be inherited or acquired through very deprived and abusive childhoods."

So, we are back in the either/or debate, with no direct implication for treatment and a series of mights and maybes. And it's not immediately possible or desirable to conduct different treatments on different psychopaths to see how they respond in "the field".

Does the nature vs nurture debate inhibit thinking?

 

[brainwave]

Why does it have to be either or is beyond me. It is both. An abused child could have had the propensity or an otherwise silent allele for psychopathy that enviromental conditions somehow activated.
In the support for nurture however, there are people who were severely abused as children who grew up to be caring, consciencious individuals. They just don't have the machinery no matter how much one tries to run a given program on them.

In my opinion what makes it both and not just nature, is that genetic changes occur all the time. Some are deliberately induced for sure, some are random. Selective pressures (environment ) determine whether or not they remain in a given population. I would say our the environment for the past 40,000 has increasingly selected for psychopathy. The pressures were provided by the actions of psychopaths in 'civilization'. In an environment built on lies, those best able to lie without conscience thrive. A truly sad state of affairs.

As for treatment, how do you treat something that selective pressures point to as being beneficial? We know in the long run psychopathy is not adaptive, but in the immediate past/present it has been, it seems. But it is approaching what I call a population density that is dangerous. What happens is a periodical cleansing when a population density increase beyond a certain point. It happens naturally but psychopaths want to speed it up thinking that they can control the process, and that they will be left on the mountain top. I could probably write a book on that one.

Those of us who cannot accept that psychopaths rule our world and do not want to be cured, will become a 'dream of the past' along with those who believe they will be at the top of the mountain. We really do have to work on finding a different reality cause this one belongs to the psychos and I don't believe it can last in its current form too much longer.