TY  - JOUR
T1  - Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study
AU  - Birbaumer N, Veit R, Lotze M, et al
Y1  - 2005/07/01
N1  - 10.1001/archpsyc.62.7.799
JO  - Archives of General Psychiatry
SP  - 799
EP  - 805
VL  - 62
IS  - 7
N2  - Context 
    Psychopaths belong to a larger group of persons with antisocial personality disorder and are characterized by an inability to have emotional involvement and by the repeated violation of the rights of others. It was hypothesized that this behavior might be the consequence of deficient fear conditioning.Objective 
    To study the cerebral, peripheral, and subjective correlates of fear conditioning in criminal psychopaths and healthy control subjects.Design 
    An aversive differential pavlovian delay conditioning paradigm with slides of neutral faces serving as conditioned and painful pressure as unconditioned stimuli.Setting 
    The Department of Medical Psychology at the University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.Participants 
    Ten male psychopaths as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised and 10 age- and education-matched healthy male controls. The psychopaths were criminal offenders on bail and waiting for their trial or were on parole. The healthy controls were recruited from the community.Main Outcome Measures 
    Brain activation based on functional magnetic resonance imaging, electrodermal responses, emotional valence, arousal, and contingency ratings.Results 
    The healthy controls showed enhanced differential activation in the limbic-prefrontal circuit (amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, insula, and anterior cingulate) during the acquisition of fear and successful verbal and autonomic conditioning. The psychopaths displayed no significant activity in this circuit and failed to show conditioned skin conductance and emotional valence ratings, although contingency and arousal ratings were normal.Conclusion 
    This dissociation of emotional and cognitive processing may be the neural basis of the lack of anticipation of aversive events in criminal psychopaths.
SN  - 0003-990X
M3  - doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.62.7.799
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.62.7.799
ER  -