Cortical Structure, Empathy, and Psychopathy in 800 Incarcerated Men
Poster No:
667
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Marcin Radecki1,2, J. Maurer3, Keith Harenski3, David Stephenson3, Erika Sampaolo1, Giada Lettieri1, Giacomo Handjaras1, Emiliano Ricciardi4, Samantha Rodriguez3,5, Craig Neumann6, Carla Harenski3, Sara Palumbo7, Silvia Pellegrini7, Jean Decety8,9, Pietro Pietrini4, Kent Kiehl3,5, Luca Cecchetti1
Institutions:
1Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy, 2Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 3Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, NM, 4Molecular Mind Laboratory, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy, 5Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 6Department of Psychology, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 7Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, 8Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 9Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, Chicago, IL
First Author:
Marcin Radecki
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca|Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge
Lucca, Italy|Cambridge, United Kingdom
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca|Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge
Lucca, Italy|Cambridge, United Kingdom
Co-Author(s):
Erika Sampaolo
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Giada Lettieri
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Giacomo Handjaras
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Samantha Rodriguez
Mind Research Network|Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM|Albuquerque, NM
Mind Research Network|Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM|Albuquerque, NM
Jean Decety
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago|Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience
Chicago, IL|Chicago, IL
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago|Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience
Chicago, IL|Chicago, IL
Kent Kiehl
Mind Research Network|Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM|Albuquerque, NM
Mind Research Network|Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM|Albuquerque, NM
Luca Cecchetti
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Social and Affective Neuroscience Group, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
Lucca, Italy
Introduction:
Reduced affective empathy – sharing another person's emotion and caring for them [1] – is a hallmark of psychopathy, a broader constellation of interpersonal/affective and lifestyle/antisocial traits that incurs major societal costs through violence, crime, and recidivism. There is a need for a better neuroscientific understanding of this empathic reduction and other traits of psychopathy to further inform its treatment and advance the broader antisocial literature [2].
Methods:
In 804 incarcerated adult men (Mage = 34 ± 8 years), we measured dispositional empathy with the Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI [3]), psychopathic traits with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R [4]), and brain structure with T1-weighted MRI. Structural data were acquired with a mobile 1.5-T MRI scanner on prison grounds, preprocessed with the standard pipeline of FreeSurfer version 7.4.1, and parcellated into 360 regions [5] to denote cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (SA). We further included the male sample of the Human Connectome Project (HCP, Young Adult release; N = 501, Mage = 28 ± 4 years) to replicate patterns of macroscale structural organization in a normative population, and to compare these patterns by psychopathy status (i.e. PCL-R ≥ 30 [P] vs ≤ 20 [N-P] out of 40).
Results:
Higher scores on PCL-R Factor 1 (Interpersonal/Affective) related negatively to Empathic Concern, while both PCL-R Factor 1 and Factor 2 (Lifestyle/Antisocial) related negatively to Perspective Taking. CT and SA did not relate to IRI (Fig. 1A), although there was subscale-specific differentiation by microstructural class [6] and/or functional network [7] (Fig. 1B). CT related to PCL-R Factor 1 (mostly positively), while SA related to both PCL-R factors (only positively; Fig. 1A). Relationships of SA were more robust than those of CT and localized primarily in the paralimbic class and somatomotor network (Fig. 1B). In addition, both CT and SA showed predictive utility for PCL-R Factor 1 in a multivariate framework, where SA explained more out-of-sample variance than CT did (Fig. 1C). In categorical analyses, psychopathic men compared to non-psychopathic men had reduced IRI scores (Perspective Taking, Cohen's D = -0.3; Empathic Concern, Cohen's D = -0.5), with the reduction in Empathic Concern being independent of Perspective Taking but not the other way around. They also had increased total and regional SA (but not CT), also primarily in the paralimbic class and somatomotor network (Fig. 2A). SA increases in psychopathy overlapped more with a meta-analytic cluster underlying affective rather than cognitive empathy [8] (Fig. 2B). From a broader psychological perspective based on Neurosynth [9], these SA increases showed highest overlap with meta-analytic clusters underlying affective-sensory functions (e.g. "pain") and lowest overlap with those underlying visual functions (e.g. "visual perception") (Fig. 2C). Finally, to investigate macroscale structural organization with diffusion-map embedding, a non-linear dimensionality-reduction technique (Fig. 2D), psychopathic men compared to non-psychopathic men had "compressed" organization of both CT and SA – that is, covariance axes with less extreme ends, globally (Fig. 2E) and/or locally (Fig. 2F) – with this organization in the total sample being replicable in HCP via spin permutation. All findings were independent of age and IQ, and additionally of total intracranial volume for SA.
Conclusions:
Psychopathy had negative associations with affective empathy and positive associations with paralimbic/somatomotor SA in a large sample of incarcerated men, stressing the importance of its affective-sensory features. While psychopathy is not recognized as a diagnostic entity in current psychiatry, future work should examine why it may show a similar compression of macroscale cortical organization as observed for several diagnoses using functional data (e.g. [10]).
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 2
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Social Cognition
Social Neuroscience Other 1
Emotion and Motivation Other
Neuroanatomy, Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission:
Cortical Anatomy and Brain Mapping
Keywords:
ADULTS
Cognition
Cortex
DISORDERS
Emotions
MRI
Psychiatric
Psychiatric Disorders
Social Interactions
Other - Empathy and Psychopathy
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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