Antisocial Personality Disorder Research Paper

Brain Differences in Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder

Antisocial personality disorder is a mental disorder in which a person consistently displays no morals and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others heartlessly; they show no guilt or remorse for their callous behavior.

Individuals with antisocial personality disorder often violate the law resulting in them developing into regular criminals. They often, behave in a violent and impulsive manner and are often involved with substance abuse. Consequently, many professionals have been intrigued as to why the brain of an individual with antisocial personality disorder functions the way

Raine implied ‘this makes sense, because it may mean that the left hemisphere cannot ‘talk’ to the more emotional right side, thus allowing aggressive impulses to go uncontrolled.’

Furthermore, Arian Ranie used an alternative type of scan, magnetic resonance imagining (MRI). Raine found that brain cells within the prefrontal cortex regions of these individuals with antisocial personality disorder were on average 11 percent smaller than normal, another indication that damage or dysfunction in this area may predispose people to hostility and aggression.

The most important emotion that individuals with antisocial personality disorder lack is empathy. Empathy is the awareness of the feelings and emotions of others. It is the key element of emotional intelligence, the link between self and others, as it is how individuals understand how others are feeling.

To investigate the neurological causes of empathy and antisocial personality disorder researchers studied 121 prisoners at a medium-security prion in the United States. The prisoners were divided into groups from highly psychopathic, moderately psychopathic and weakly