The word psychopath is very controversial and has many stigmas and negative connotations associated with it. But psychologists can agree that a psychopath is generally a person who lacks empathy and remorse. These are the people who make up twenty percent of violent criminal offenders. However, their mannerisms are very different from regular violent criminals. It is common knowledge that criminals in general are quick tempered, aggressive and respond hyperactively towards threats. Psychopaths on the other hand are very logical and collected, their aggression is premeditated and their mannerisms are cold and impersonal. These differences can be attributed to everything from upbringing to body chemistry, but now new research has shown that the brains of people labeled as “psychopaths” actually respond abnormally to forms of punishment. However, before we go on, the study found it important to note that not all psychopaths are violent or criminals. The conclusions tentatively reached by this project are not sweeping generalizations of everyone who suffers from psychopathy and further research is still needed to test the broader relevance of these new findings.

The study took place at King’s College London and compared fMRI scans of violent offenders, to psychopathic violent offenders with convictions for things such as murder and rape, as well as people with no history of criminal violence. The subjects had to play a matching game while inside the MRI machine, but the game was tricky because the rules changed without warning. The scans showed how the offenders failed to learn from the “punishments” implemented by the game when the wrong choice was made. Through this study the researchers found actual structural differences between both the gray and white matter fibers tracts of the psychopaths.

When “punished” by the game by receiving a deduction of points for something that used to result in a gain, the brains of the non-psychopathic criminals’ scans were very similar to those of the “normal” people. In the brains of the psychopaths, the regions of the brain associated with both empathy and learning responded differently. This suggests that psychopathic criminals have structurally different mental pathways of learning from a punishment/reward system. This can tie into an inability to learn from or anticipate different consequences when planning or committing a crime.

A good insight to take away from this study is that maybe if children who are found to have pre-psychopathic tendencies such as aggression and anti-socialness, that there can be an intervention of their learning patterns that could potentially change specific brain mechanisms behind psychopathy. If a program such as this were to come about it could have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of psychopathically violent criminals.