ArticleNeuroImage2020
Psychopathy is associated with fear-specific reductions in neural activity during affective perspective-taking.
Article in NeuroImage, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Using physiological biomarkers in forensic psychiatry: a scoping review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Psychopathy and medial frontal cortex: A systematic review reveals predominantly null relationships.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Cortical Structure in Relation to Empathy and Psychopathy in 800 Incarcerated Men.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Resting-state brain function and its modulation by intranasal oxytocin in antisocial personality disorder with and without psychopathy.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Cortical structure in relation to empathy and psychopathy in 800 incarcerated men.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Independent Impacts of Maltreatment and Amygdala Volume on Worsening Callous-Unemotional Traits in High-Risk Youths.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- Cognitive and affective perspective taking amongst adolescent offenders with variants of callous-unemotional traits.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2024Article
- Article
- Impaired salience network switching in psychopathy.Behavioural brain research · 2023Article
- Neural responses to morally laden interactions in female inmates with psychopathy.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2021Article
- Cognitive Empathy in Subtypes of Antisocial Individuals.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 6 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Psychopathic individuals are notorious for their callous disregard for others' emotions. Prior research has linked psychopathy to deficits in affective mechanisms underlying empathy (e.g., affective sharing), yet research relating psychopathy to cognitive mechanisms underlying empathy (e.g., affective perspective-taking and Theory of Mind) requires further clarification. To elucidate the neurobiology of cognitive mechanisms of empathy in psychopathy, we administered an fMRI task and tested for global as well as emotion-specific deficits in affective perspective-taking. Adult male incarcerated offenders (N = 94) viewed images of two people interacting, with one individual's face obscured by a shape. Participants were cued to either identify the emotion of the obscured individual or identify the shape from one of two emotion or shape choices presented on each trial. Target emotions included anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral. Contrary to predictions, psychopathy was unrelated to neural activity in the Affective Perspective-taking > Shape contrast. In line with predictions, psychopathy was negatively related to task accuracy during affective perspective-taking for fear, happiness, and sadness. Psychopathy was related to reduced hemodynamic activity exclusively during fear perspective-taking in several areas: left anterior insula extending into posterior orbitofrontal cortex, right precuneus, left superior parietal lobule, and left superior occipital cortex. Although much prior research has emphasized psychopathy-related abnormalities in affective mechanisms mediating empathy, current results add to growing evidence of psychopathy-related abnormalities in a cognitive mechanism related to empathy. These findings highlight brain regions that are hypoactive in psychopathy when explicitly processing another's fear.
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Registered trials
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