Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
The Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical, Albuquerque, NM, United States; Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States.
Neuroimage Clin. 2022;34:102984. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2022.102984. Epub 2022 Mar 5.
The ability to share and understand the distress of others is critical for successful social interactions and is a fundamental building block of morality. Psychopathy is a personality disorder that includes lack of empathy and concern for others. In the present study, functional MRI was used to examine neural responses and functional connectivity associated with empathy and affective perspective-taking in female inmates (N = 109) with various levels of psychopathic traits, as measured with Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Participants viewed hands and feet in painful or non-painful situations while adopting a first person or third person perspective. All participants demonstrated robust neural responses in anterior insula (aINS), anterior cingulate (ACC), temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and supplementary motor area (SMA) when viewing pain, both during imagine-self and imagine-other blocks. Psychopathy shifted the functional connectivity seeded in core nodes of the salience and social cognition networks. Perceiving stimuli depicting somatic pain led to decreased functional coupling from right temporoparietal junction to superior temporal sulcus, which correlated with scores on PCL-R Factor 1 (Affective/Interpersonal). In contrast, connectivity from right insula to precuneus increased with Factor 2 (Lifestyle/Antisocial) scores. When adopting a third-person perspective, psychopathic traits modulated connectivity from the social cognition network, but not the salience network, with Factor 1 scores associated with increased connectivity to sensorimotor cortex and temporal pole, while Factor 2 scores were associated with decreased connectivity with ACC/SMA and inferior frontal gyrus. Overall, these results demonstrate that psychopathic traits in incarcerated females are associated with atypical functional connectivity within the salience network during pain-empathy processing and within the social cognition network during affective perspective-taking.
分享和理解他人的痛苦的能力对于成功的社交互动至关重要，是道德的基本组成部分。精神病态是一种人格障碍，包括缺乏同理心和对他人的关心。在本研究中，使用功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 检查了具有不同精神病态特征的女性囚犯（N=109）的同理心和情感视角-taking 的神经反应和功能连接，这些特征是用修订版精神病态检查表 (PCL-R) 测量的。参与者在采取第一人称或第三人称视角时，观看处于痛苦或非痛苦状态的手和脚。当观看疼痛时，所有参与者在前脑岛 (aINS)、前扣带 (ACC)、颞顶联合 (TPJ) 和辅助运动区 (SMA) 中均表现出强烈的神经反应，无论是在想象自我还是想象他人的阶段。精神病态特征改变了突显和社会认知网络核心节点的功能连接。感知描绘躯体疼痛的刺激会导致从右侧颞顶联合到颞上回的功能耦合减少，这与 PCL-R 因子 1（情感/人际关系）的分数相关。相反，右侧脑岛到楔前叶的连接随着因子 2（生活方式/反社会）分数的增加而增加。当采用第三人称视角时，精神病态特征会调节来自社会认知网络的连接，但不会调节突显网络的连接，因子 1 的分数与与感觉运动皮层和颞极的连接增加相关，而因子 2 的分数与与 ACC/SMA 和额下回的连接减少相关。总的来说，这些结果表明，被监禁女性的精神病态特征与疼痛共情处理过程中突显网络内以及情感视角-taking 过程中社会认知网络内的异常功能连接有关。
