The relationship between brain morphology and psychopathy – literature review

Introduction:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, shallow affect and a greater tendency to be impulsive. Some studies suggest that there could be differences in e.g. the cavum septum pellucidum and amygdalae in psychopaths’ brains compared to non-psychopaths.

Material and methods:
The aim of this paper is to review current studies on cases of people with psychopathy. A PubMed search was conducted using keywords such as “Psychopathy” and “Psychopathy brain”. In the selection of publications, brain structure that was examined, substance abuse as a covariate and the year of publication were important. Publications not available in English were excluded.

Results:
Studies have shown that there are differences in the morphology of brain structures, for example the nucleus accumbens and amygdala, observed in people with psychopathy compared to controls. Psychopaths also showed cortical thinning, most significant in the left insula. In people with substance use disorder a reduced volume of gray matter was observed in the prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex and in the premotor area of the cerebral cortex.

Conclusions:
Structural differences in the brain were described in people with psychopathic traits. The conclusions of some of the analyzed studies were similar to each other, but others were not. Substance use disorder/substance abuse can affect the results of research and should be counted as a covariate. There is a need for further studies of described brain structures using same covariates for better understanding of the brain structure-psychopathy relationship.