Jean Decety, A leading University of Chicago researcher on empathy, is launching a project to understand psychopathy by studying criminals in prisons. Decety tells us:

The research comes at a time of increased awareness about the role that mental health plays in crime, including questions about the suspects accused in recent mass murders in Norway and in Arizona.

Through the project, Decety and his colleagues intend to study mental health by measuring the activity of brain networks necessary to experience empathy among a prison population and compare the results with data from healthy individuals.

Although only one percent of the general population has psychopathy, between 20 and 30 percent of the prison population are psychopaths. Criminal psychopaths are disproportionately responsible for crime and typically commit five major crimes by the time they are 40, research shows.

Little is understood about psychopathy, and almost no treatments have been developed that have been effective.

“If psychopathy is to be treated effectively, targeted therapies and interventions must be developed based on the underlying causes of the disorder,” Decety said.

Other attempts at studying psychopathy have been inadequate because they were based on inferences about brain functioning not based on neuroimaging, or they had small sample sizes, Decety pointed out.

“Our project will correct all of these issues and be the first to be in a position to adequately address the underlying neurological differences characterizing psychopathic offenders with respect to empathic processing,” he said. http://neurosciencenews.com/prison-r...hopath-brains/

A challenging bit of research. The results should prove interesting.