Psychopathic individuals are notorious for their callous disregard for others' emotions. Prior research has linked psychopathy to deficits in affective mechanisms underlying empathy (e.g., affective sharing), yet research relating psychopathy to cognitive mechanisms underlying empathy (e.g., affective perspective-taking and Theory of Mind) requires further clarification. To elucidate the neurobiology of cognitive mechanisms of empathy in psychopathy, we administered an fMRI task and tested for global as well as emotion-specific deficits in affective perspective-taking. Adult male incarcerated offenders (N=94) viewed images of two people interacting, with one individual's face obscured by a shape. Participants were cued to either identify the emotion of the obscured individual or identify the shape from one of two emotion or shape choices presented on each trial. Target emotions included anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral. Contrary to predictions, psychopathy was unrelated to neural activity in the Affective Perspective-taking > Shape contrast. In line with predictions, psychopathy was negatively related to task accuracy during affective perspective-taking for fear, happiness, and sadness. Psychopathy was related to reduced hemodynamic activity exclusively during fear perspective-taking in several areas: left anterior insula extending into posterior orbitofrontal cortex, right precuneus, left superior parietal lobule, and left superior occipital cortex. Although much prior research has emphasized psychopathy-related abnormalities in affective mechanisms mediating empathy, current results add to growing evidence of psychopathy-related abnormalities in a cognitive mechanism related to empathy. These findings highlight brain regions that are hypoactive in psychopathy when explicitly processing another's fear.

中文翻译：

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精神病与情感观点采择过程中神经活动因恐惧而减少有关


精神变态者因冷酷无情地忽视他人的情绪而臭名昭著。先前的研究已将精神病与同理心背后的情感机制缺陷（例如情感分享）联系起来，但将精神病与同理心背后的认知机制（例如情感观点采择和心理理论）联系起来的研究需要进一步澄清。为了阐明精神病态同理心认知机制的神经生物学，我们执行了一项功能磁共振成像任务，并测试了情感观点采择中的整体缺陷和特定情绪缺陷。成年男性被监禁罪犯（N = 94）观看了两个人互动的图像，其中一个人的脸被一个形状遮住了。参与者被提示要么识别被遮挡个体的情绪，要么从每次试验中提出的两种情绪或形状选择之一中识别形状。目标情绪包括愤怒、恐惧、快乐、悲伤和中性。与预测相反，在情感视角 > 形状对比中，精神病与神经活动无关。与预测一致，在恐惧、快乐和悲伤的情感观点采择过程中，精神病与任务准确性呈负相关。精神病与恐惧换位思考过程中几个区域的血流动力学活动减少有关：左前岛叶延伸到后眶额皮质、右楔前叶、左上顶小叶和左上枕叶皮质。尽管许多先前的研究强调了介导同理心的情感机制中与精神病相关的异常，但目前的结果增加了越来越多的证据表明与同理心相关的认知机制中与精神病相关的异常。 这些发现强调了精神病患者在明确处理他人的恐惧时大脑区域的活跃度低下。