A new study by researchers in the UK has found that psychopaths have biological brain differences that make them stand apart from other normal people. The research appears in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Professor Declan Murphy at The Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, and team of researchers found that not only do psychopaths show less activity in brain areas involved in assessing the emotion of facial expressions, but they are far less responsive to faces that emote fear.
Criminal psychopaths are people with aggressive and anti-social personalities who lack emotional empathy, and can commit crimes such as rape or murder without showing signs of remorse or guilt.
It has been suggested that psychopaths lack empathy because their brains are defective when it comes to processing facial and vocal expressions of distress, such as fear and sadness, in others.