1.According to an Australian study recently published in the journalChemosensory Perception, people with psychopathic tendencies, in addition to being manipulative, antisocial and addicted to strong emotions, havea stunted sense of smell, something that is attributed to a malfunction of the frontal area of the brain. In this same region of our brain reside the neurons in charge of impulse control, planning and the ability to adapt behavior to social norms.
2. Using neuroimaging techniques, scientists at King’s College London (United Kingdom) have identified brain differences that could explain psychopathy from a biophysiological point of view. Specifically, they have found thatthe nerve fibers that connect the amygdala -related to fear- and the orbitofrontal cortex -involved in decision-making-are slightlyunstructured in psychopaths, and that this anomaly is more serious the greater the mental imbalance.
3. The brain of psychopaths is configured in such a way that they seek rewards at any cost, without weighing the risks, as revealed in a Vanderbilt University study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. This is because there arean imbalance in the circuitry of dopamine, the pleasure-related neurotransmitter, in an area known as the nucleus accumbens. In fact, when a psychopath uses amphetamines their brain releases four times more dopamine than a healthy brain.
4. Scientists from Cornell University (USA) recently demonstrated that there is a certain pattern in the words psychopaths use during a conversation. Specifically, when these subjects speakuse twice as many terms related to food, sex and money as a normal person. And in their speech they barely include words that refer to family, religion or other “social needs.” They also tend to use past tense more and pause more with sounds like “um” than the rest of the population.
