Neural responses to others' pain vary with psychopathic traits in healthy adult males

Disrupted empathic processing is a core feature of psychopathy. Neuroimaging data have suggested that individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits show atypical responses to others' pain in a network of brain regions typically recruited during empathic processing (anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, and mid- and anterior cingulate cortex). Here, we investigated whether neural responses to others' pain vary with psychopathic traits within the general population in a similar manner to that found in individuals at the extreme end of the continuum. As predicted, variation in psychopathic traits was associated with variation in neural responses to others' pain in the network of brain regions typically engaged during empathic processing. Consistent with previous research, our findings indicated the presence of suppressor effects in the association of levels of the affective-interpersonal and lifestyle-antisocial dimensions of psychopathy with neural responses to others' pain. That is, after controlling for the influence of the other dimension, higher affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits were associated with reduced neural responses to others' pain, whilst higher lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were associated with increased neural responses to others' pain. Our findings provide further evidence that atypical function in this network might represent neural markers of disrupted emotional and empathic processing; that the two dimensions of psychopathy might tap into distinct underlying vulnerabilities; and, most importantly, that the relationships observed at the extreme end of the psychopathy spectrum apply to the nonclinical distribution of these traits, providing further evidence for continuities in the mechanisms underlying psychopathic traits across the general population.
- This work was supported by a Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology Doctoral Grant (Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia; SFRH/BD/60279/2009), awarded to A.S.C.; a British Academy Small Research Grant (SG101362), awarded to C.L.S.; an Economic and Social Research Council (RES-062-23-2202) award to E.V.; and a Wellcome Trust Biomedical Vacation Scholarship awarded to R.A.L. E.V. is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder. C.L.S. was partially supported during the writing of this article by an Economic and Social Research Council award (ES/K008951/1). We thank Craig Neumann for his help and advice with regard to the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale. The authors report no conflicts of interest and assert that all procedures contributing to this work complied with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.