Psychopaths and their 'Empathy Switch'

Over the last year there has been some interesting research into Psychopaths, I would have posted about this earlier but it slipped my mind until I was too busy to do so. Anyway! Here we go, a thread on how Psychopaths actually [i]can[/i] feel empathy for other people, but it seems to be a selective ability hence the name 'Empathy Switch' which was coined by the researchers who found this. [quote][url=http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/136/8/2550.full.pdf]Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with a profound lack of empathy. Neuroscientists have associated empathy and its interindividual variation with how strongly participants activate brain regions involved in their own actions, emotions and sensations while viewing those of others. Here we compared brain activity of 18 psychopathic offenders with 26 control subjects while viewing video clips of emotional hand interactions and while experiencing similar interactions. Brain regions involved in experiencing these interactions were not spontaneously activated as strongly in the patient group while viewing the video clips. However, this group difference was markedly reduced when we specifically instructed participants to feel with the actors in the videos. Our results suggest that psychopathy is not a simple incapacity for vicarious activations but rather reduced spontaneous vicarious activations co-existing with relatively normal deliberate counterparts.[/url][/quote] Vicarious activations are referring to empathetic responses, something previously thought nonexistant in Psychopaths. This is quite a groundbreaking piece of research because previously the widely accepted belief was that Psychopaths lacked emotions, or the capacity to have them and so were unable to feel empathy. With this research (Peer reviewed and approved) showing otherwise and other studies potentially in the works attempting to replicate the results it offers a decent glimmer of hope to people with Psychopathy or those who's lives have been affected by a Psychopath in the family. It could be possible for a therapist/Psychiatrist to train/treat them into having a normal (If potentially reduced) emotional reaction to stimuli rather than faked emotions or none at all. This is the crucial piece though [quote]Now scientists have found that only when asked to empathise did the criminals' empathy reaction, also known as the mirror system, fire up the same way as it did for the controls. Without instruction, they show reduced activity in the regions of the brain associated with pain.[/quote] It means that it was not an autonomic response but a triggered one, which means that in the same way that CBT can be used to 'train' someone to stop a certain behaviour it is feasible for a Psychopath to be trained to automatically activate their 'empathy switch'. A countering opinion though by Professor Viding from UCL (University College of London) is that - [quote] '"It's dangerous to look at brain activation and say that it means they're empathising. They are able to generate a typical neural response, but that doesn't mean they have the same empathetic experience," Prof Viding told BBC News. "We know they can generate the same response but they do that in an active and effortful way. Under free-viewing conditions they don't seem to. Just because they can empathise, doesn't mean they will. '[/quote] Now mild apologies if this thread is full of big words, but it's difficult to break down more complex Neurology/Psychiatric terms without losing their meaning in the process :l If you want clarification on anything, just ask and I'll do my best to help you out. I know that quite a few people are interested/fascinated by Psychopathy and so hopefully this thread will be informative for them. There are a couple of individuals who may find this particularly interesting but I shan't name names. Links and Sources[spoiler] My university course is giving me flak for not putting enough references in so I might as well practise <.<[/spoiler]http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/136/8/2550.full.pdf http://www.occupycorporatism.com/10-facts-psychopaths-discovered-uc-brain-scan-study/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23431793