Abstract
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by remorseless and impulsive antisocial behavior. Given the significant societal costs of the recidivistic criminal acti\xadvity associated with the disorder, there is a pressing need for more effective treatment strategies and, hence, a better understanding of the psychobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is likely to play an important role in psychopathy. In particular, the ventromedial and anterior cingulate sectors of PFC are theorized to mediate a number of social and affective decision-making functions that appear to be disrupted in psychopathy. This article provides a critical summary of human neuroimaging data implicating prefrontal dysfunction in psychopathy. A growing body of evidence associates psychopathy with structural and functional abnormalities in ventromedial PFC and anterior cingulate cortex. Although this burgeoning field still faces a number of methodological challenges and outstanding questions that will need to be resolved by future studies, the research to date has established a link between psychopathy and PFC.
About the author
Dr. Koenigs’ education and training includes a BS in Neurobiology from the University of Wisconsin- Madison (2002), a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Iowa (2006), and a postdoctoral research fellowship in Cognitive Neuroscience at the US National Institutes of Health (2006–2008). Since 2008, Dr. Koenigs has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research aims to identify and characterize the brain circuits underlying emotion, social behavior, and decision-making through the study of neurological and psychiatric patient popu lations. Publications and additional information are available at http://koenigslab.psychitary.wise.edu/.
©2012 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
