tiny. . . tiny. . . what?
First, people with social anxiety are not likely to be psychopaths, perhaps not surprisingly.
Stefan G. Hofmann, Kristina J. Korte, and Michael K. Suvak, “The Upside of Being Socially Anxious: Psychopathic Attributes and Social Anxiety are Negatively Associated,” J Soc Clin Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 September 22Published in final edited form as:J Soc Clin Psychol. 2009 June 1; 28(6): 714–727. doi: 10.1521/jscp.2009.28.6.714.
What is surprising, I think, is that psychopaths have tiny. . . wait for it. . . amygdalas.
In a recent SoCal study, psychopaths were recruited from temporary employment agencies, and brain scanned.
. . . Individuals with psychopathy showed significant bilateral volume reductions in the amygdala compared with controls (left, 17.1%; right, 18.9%). Surface deformations were localized in regions in the approximate vicinity of the basolateral, lateral, cortical, and central nuclei of the amygdala. Significant correlations were found between reduced amygdala volumes and increased total and facet psychopathy scores, with correlations strongest for the affective and interpersonal facets of psychopathy.
Yang Y, Raine A, Narr KL, Colletti P, Toga AW., “Localization of deformations within the amygdala in individuals with psychopathy.,” Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2009 Sep;66(9):986-94.
One complaint about the methods: These researchers always recruit psychopaths from the temp agencies downtown. Enough I say. Time to move uptown to the corner offices in Century City instead of going downtown to the temp agencies.
I thought psychopaths would have ginormous amygdalas given a predeliction toward unbridled rage and anger, even beyond instrumental aggression. Perhaps it’s not the size, but what they can do with it — have this hair-trigger form of tantruming. Is the psychopath amygdala small but densely synaptically wired such that signals are picked up indiscriminately?
Sort of extremely obliquely relatedly, if you want to write a book about someone and you don’t want them to claim the character resembles them, you can describe them has having a tiny. . . well, now you can describe them as having a tiny amygdala — after all, no one would want to admit to that.
More 10.08.09: Interesting to note that psychopaths have striatums that are larger than average. The striatum is thought to be involved in the “reward” pathway full of dopamine and serotonin. So if the need for dopamine “hits” is strong (from so many dopamine receptors in the striatum), and the amygdala is small (so that one is fearless) one will be a risk taker, one would think. Combine this with the white matter disconnect and voila — you take risks and you don’t care if it brings down others.
Striatum paper (same group as the amygdala group). Glenn AL, Raine A, Yaralian PS, Yang Y., “Increased Volume of the Striatum in Psychopathic Individuals,” Biol Psychiatry. 2009 Aug 14. [Epub ahead of print] doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.06.018
Blogged here: Unified Field Theory of Psychopath Brain Development: Retinoid Toxicity
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