Kiehl K A, Hare R D, Liddle P F, McDonald J J
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Biol Psychiatry. 1999 Jun 1;45(11):1498-507. doi: 10.1016/s0006-3223(98)00193-0.
Clinicians have long recognized that psychopaths show deficits in cognitive function, but there have been few experimental studies exploring these deficits. We present here the first in a series of event-related potential (ERP) experiments designed to elucidate and characterize the neural correlates of cognitive processes of psychopaths.
We recorded ERPs from a topographic array from 11 psychopathic and 10 nonpsychopathic prison inmates, assessed with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, during performance of a visual oddball task. ERPs to target (25% of trials) and nontarget (75% of trials) visual stimuli were analyzed.
Consistent with previous research, there were no group differences in the latency or amplitude of the ERPs for the nontarget stimuli. For nonpsychopaths, the P300 amplitude was larger when elicited by the target stimuli than when elicited by the nontarget stimuli. In contrast, psychopaths failed to show reliable P300 amplitude differences between the target and nontarget conditions. Psychopaths had a smaller amplitude P300 to target stimuli than did nonpsychopaths. In addition, the amplitude of the P300 was less lateralized in psychopaths than in nonpsychopaths. Psychopaths also had a larger centrofrontal negative wave (N550) during the target condition than did nonpsychopaths.
The results of this study indicate that there are substantial differences between psychopaths and others in the processing of even simple cognitive tasks and provide support for information processing models of psychopathy.
临床医生早就认识到精神病态者在认知功能方面存在缺陷，但很少有实验研究探索这些缺陷。我们在此展示一系列事件相关电位（ERP）实验中的首个实验，该实验旨在阐明并描述精神病态者认知过程的神经关联。
我们在11名精神病态者和10名非精神病态者监狱囚犯执行视觉oddball任务期间，从一个地形阵列记录ERP，这些囚犯用修订版哈瑞精神病态量表进行评估。分析针对目标（25%的试验）和非目标（75%的试验）视觉刺激的ERP。
与先前研究一致，非目标刺激的ERP潜伏期或波幅在两组之间没有差异。对于非精神病态者，目标刺激引发的P300波幅大于非目标刺激引发的P300波幅。相比之下，精神病态者在目标和非目标条件之间未能表现出可靠的P300波幅差异。精神病态者对目标刺激的P300波幅小于非精神病态者。此外，精神病态者的P300波幅比非精神病态者的P300波幅更少出现偏侧化。在目标条件下，精神病态者的中央额叶负波（N550）也比非精神病态者更大。
本研究结果表明，在处理即使是简单的认知任务时，精神病态者与其他人之间存在实质性差异，并为精神病态的信息加工模型提供了支持。
