Elsa Ermer

Aberrant paralimbic gray matter in criminal psychopathy

Psychopaths impose large costs on society, as they are frequently habitual, violent criminals. The pervasive nature of emotional and behavioral symptoms in psychopathy suggests that several associated brain regions may contribute to the disorder. Studies employing a variety of methods have converged on a set of brain regions in paralimbic cortex and limbic areas that appear to be dysfunctional in psychopathy. The present study further tests this hypothesis by investigating structural abnormalities using voxel-based morphometry in a sample of incarcerated men (N=296). Psychopathy was associated with decreased regional gray matter in several paralimbic and limbic areas, including bilateral parahippocampal, amygdala, and hippocampal regions, bilateral temporal pole, posterior cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex. The consistent identification of paralimbic cortex and limbic structures in psychopathy across diverse methodologies strengthens the interpretation that these regions are crucial for understanding neural dysfunction in psychopathy.

Theory of mind broad and narrow: Reasoning about social exchange engages ToM areas, precautionary reasoning does not

Abstract Baron-Cohen (1995) proposed that the theory of mind (ToM) inference system evolved to promote strategic social interaction. Social exchange—a form of co-operation for mutual benefit—involves strategic social interaction and requires ToM inferences about the contents of other individuals’ mental states, especially their desires, goals, and intentions. There are behavioral and neuropsychological dissociations between reasoning about social exchange and reasoning about equivalent problems tapping other, more general content domains. It has therefore been proposed that social exchange behavior is regulated by social contract algorithms: a domain-specific inference system that is functionally specialized for reasoning about social exchange. We report an fMRI study using the Wason selection task that provides further support for this hypothesis. Precautionary rules share so many properties with social exchange rules—they are conditional, deontic, and involve subjective utilities—that most reasoning theories claim they are processed by the same neurocomputational machinery. Nevertheless, neuroimaging shows that reasoning about social exchange activates brain areas not activated by reasoning about precautionary rules, and vice versa. As predicted, neural correlates of ToM (anterior and posterior temporal cortex) were activated when subjects interpreted social exchange rules, but not precautionary rules (where ToM inferences are unnecessary). We argue that the interaction between ToM and social contract algorithms can be reciprocal: social contract algorithms requires ToM inferences, but their functional logic also allows ToM inferences to be made. By considering interactions between ToM in the narrower sense (belief–desire reasoning) and all the social inference systems that create the logic of human social interaction—ones that enable as well as use inferences about the content of mental states—a broader conception of ToM may emerge: a computational model embodying a Theory of Human Nature (ToHN).

Aberrant paralimbic gray matter in incarcerated male adolescents with psychopathic traits

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between brain structure and psychopathic traits in maximum-security incarcerated male adolescents, and to examine whether the associations between brain volumes in paralimbic and limbic regions and psychopathic traits observed in incarcerated adult men extend to an independent sample of incarcerated male adolescents. METHOD A structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of regional gray matter volumes by using voxel-based morphometry in maximum-security incarcerated male adolescents (N = 218) assessed for psychopathic traits using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version (PCL-YV). All analyses controlled for effects of age, substance use, and brain size. RESULTS Consistent with hypotheses and the adult literature, psychopathic traits were associated with decreased regional gray matter volumes in diffuse paralimbic regions, including orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral temporal poles, and posterior cingulate cortex. CONCLUSIONS These results strengthen the interpretation that paralimbic regions are central for understanding neural dysfunction associated with psychopathic traits and that psychopathy is best conceptualized as a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Emotional Intelligence in Incarcerated Men With Psychopathic Traits

The expression, recognition, and communication of emotional states are ubiquitous features of the human social world. Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to perceive, manage, and reason about emotions, in oneself and others. Individuals with psychopathy have numerous difficulties in social interaction and show impairment on some emotional tasks. Here, the authors investigate the relation between EI and psychopathy in a sample of incarcerated men (N = 374), using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003) and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002). The MSCEIT is a well-validated ability-based EI measure that does not rely on self-report judgments of emotional skills. The Hare PCL-R is the gold standard for the assessment of psychopathy in clinical populations. Controlling for general intelligence, psychopathy was associated with lower EI. These findings suggest individuals with psychopathy are impaired on a range of EI abilities and that EI is an important area for understanding deficits in psychopathy.

Psychopaths Are Impaired in Social Exchange and Precautionary Reasoning

Psychopaths show a profound lack of morality and behavioral controls in the presence of intact general intellectual functioning. Two hallmarks of psychopathy are the persistent violation of social contracts (i.e., cheating) and chronic, impulsive risky behavior. These behaviors present a puzzle: Can psychopaths understand and reason about what counts as cheating or risky behavior in a particular situation? We tested incarcerated psychopaths’ and incarcerated nonpsychopaths’ reasoning about social contract rules, precautionary rules, and descriptive rules using the Wason selection task. Results were consistent with our hypotheses: Psychopaths (compared with matched nonpsychopaths) showed significant impairment on social contract rules and precautionary rules, but not on descriptive rules. These results cannot be accounted for by differences in intelligence, motivation, or general antisocial tendency. These findings suggest that examination of evolutionarily identified reasoning processes can be a fruitful research approach for identifying which specific mechanisms are impaired in psychopathy.

Unfairness sensitivity and social decision-making in individuals with alcohol dependence: A preliminary study

BACKGROUND Altruistic punishment is an evolutionary-based mechanism aimed at maximizing the probability of reciprocity in cooperative exchanges, through the deterrence of non-cooperators. In economic games, humans will often punish others for non-cooperation, even if this punishment is costly to the self. For instance, in the Ultimatum Game paradigm, people refuse offers considered as unfair even though they are disadvantaged financially by doing so. Here, we hypothesize that, due to an impulsive decision making style, individuals with alcoholism will display an heightened unfairness sensitivity that leads them to reject advantageous offers more frequently on the Ultimatum Game. METHODS Thirty recently detoxified alcohol-dependent individuals and 30 matched healthy control participants performed the Ultimatum Game task, in which participants had to respond to take-it-or-leave-it offers ranging from fair to unfair and made by a fictive proposer. RESULTS Alcohol-dependent participants decided to reject unfair offers more frequently during the Ultimatum Game, as compared to controls. CONCLUSIONS In situations of social frustration or irritation, such as unfair Ultimatum Game offers, alcohol-dependent individuals may have more difficulty than controls regulating their emotional impulses, and respond aggressively or retributively (i.e., by rejecting the unfair offer).

Polysubstance dependent patients display a more utilitarian profile in moral decision-making than alcohol-dependent patients, depressive patients and controls.

BACKGROUND Addiction has been shown to be associated with the endorsement of utilitarian moral judgments. Ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) dysfunction may explain these findings. METHODS 100 subjects were recruited: 25 polysubstance dependent patients, 25 alcohol dependent patients, 25 patients with major depressive disorders, and 25 normal controls. Subjects were assessed with a battery of 24 moral dilemmas: 8 impersonal dilemmas (no physical contact involved); 8 personal pareto (direct action that does not make the harmed individual worse off) and 8 personal non-pareto (direct action that does make the harmed individual worse off). The Iowa Gambling Task was used to document a possible connection between VMPFC dysfunction and responses to the moral dilemmas. RESULTS Polysubstance dependent patients endorsed more utilitarian choices than controls on all types of dilemmas and more than depressed patients on impersonal and personal pareto dilemmas. Alcohol dependent patients had intermediate results between polysubstance dependent patients and controls but these differences were not significant. All patients showed significantly poorer performance compared to controls on the Iowa Gambling Task, but there was no significant association between Iowa Gambling Tasks scores and moral dilemma choices. CONCLUSION Polysubstance dependent patients made more utilitarian choices when responding to moral dilemmas than depressed patients and normal controls, while alcoholic patients showed intermediate results. The absence of correlation between performance on the Iowa Gambling Task and the number of more utilitarian choices indicates that moral dilemma and decision making under uncertainty tap into separate mechanisms.

Cross cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride

Significance Cross-cultural tests from 16 nations were performed to evaluate the hypothesis that the emotion of pride evolved to guide behavior to elicit valuation and respect from others. Ancestrally, enhanced evaluations would have led to increased assistance and deference from others. To incline choice, the pride system must compute for a potential action an anticipated pride intensity that tracks the magnitude of the approval or respect that the action would generate in the local audience. All tests demonstrated that pride intensities measured in each location closely track the magnitudes of others’ positive evaluations. Moreover, different cultures echo each other both in what causes pride and in what elicits positive evaluations, suggesting that the underlying valuation systems are universal. Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development, is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluate the theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the cost-effective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others’ valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose recognition by others would lead them to enhance their evaluations of the individual, and (iii) mobilizing the individual to take advantage of the resulting enhanced social landscape. To modulate how much to invest in actions that might lead to enhanced evaluations by others, the pride system must forecast the magnitude of the evaluations the action would evoke in the audience and calibrate its activation proportionally. We tested this prediction in 16 countries across 4 continents (n = 2,085), for 25 acts and traits. As predicted, the pride intensity for a given act or trait closely tracks the valuations of audiences, local (mean r = +0.82) and foreign (mean r = +0.75). This relationship is specific to pride and does not generalize to other positive emotions that coactivate with pride but lack its audience-recalibrating function.

Impaired non-verbal emotion processing in Pathological Gamblers.

Impaired perception of emotion in others has been described and confirmed in addictions with substances, but no such data exists regarding addictions without substances. As it has been hypothesized that toxic effect of substances on the brain was responsible for the impairments described, studying addictions without substances could be of interest to confirm this hypothesis. Twenty-two male pathological gamblers were compared to 22 male healthy controls matched for age and education level on non-verbal emotion perception tasks including faces, voices, and musical excerpts. Depression and anxiety levels were controlled for. Pathological gamblers significantly underestimated the intensity of peacefulness in music, and overall they were less accurate when reading emotion in voices and faces. They also overestimated emotional intensity in neutral voices and faces. Although anxiety levels did account for accuracy problems when detecting fear in voices and for overestimating emotions in neutral faces, anxiety levels did not explain the range of deficits observed. This is the first study showing non-verbal perception deficits in a purely behavioural addiction. These findings show that deficits in decoding non-verbal signals are associated with addictive behaviours per se, and are not due solely to toxic effects of substances on the brain.

Decoding of nonverbal language in alcoholism: A perception or a labeling problem?

Alcohol-dependent patients have difficulty recognizing social cues such as emotional facial expressions, prosody, and postures. However, most researchers describing these difficulties rely on labeling tasks. It therefore remains difficult to disentangle genuine emotion-decoding problems from emotion-labeling impairments. In the present study, 35 recently detoxified alcohol-dependent patients were compared with 35 matched controls on four emotion-pairing tasks to explore the distinction between labeling and perceptual abilities. First, 2 tasks were used to assess emotion-labeling ability (labeling task) and working memory (necessary to process emotional stimuli; control matching task). Next, 2 experimental pairing tasks were used to explore unimodal, Face-face or voice-voice) and cross-modal, Face-voice or voice-face) matching abilities in the absence of any labeling requirement. Patients had difficulty accurately processing voices in unimodal tasks and correctly matching emotional stimuli in cross-modal tasks. Specifically, they did not correctly identify neutral stimuli in unimodal or cross-modal tasks and did not correctly identify fear in cross-modal tasks. Reaction times were also slower in these patients. However, accuracy and reaction time (RT) differences between patients and controls were accounted for by including anxiety and depression scores as covariates in the model. These results suggest that emotion-decoding difficulties observed in recently detoxified alcohol-dependent patients are not due to a specific emotion-labeling impairment, but rather involve perceptual difficulties or later integrative processing steps in the brain. Future studies should directly compare depressed or nondepressed alcohol-dependent patients with depressive patients to disentangle the influences of these highly comorbid disorders on nonverbal language perception.