How some mental illness patients battle with their dark side
Psychiatric patients can possess antisocial characteristics being less irrational and impulsive. This can lead to dangerous behavior and cause harm to the society.
However, there are many other patients with antisocial features who are able to get along well with people and have peaceful life. This raised questions why these behaviors are different.
A recently published trial from the researchers from the Virginia Commonwealth University address the above question. The study found that “successful” psychopathic patients exhibited greater density of grey matter in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex region of their brain.
Grey matter contain a lot of nerve cells and impact information processing. The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex region in our brain is associated with the self regulation impact people’s emotion and impulsive behavior. The more grey matter you have in specific area of the brain, the brain can function more appropriately.
The trial was composed of 2 smaller studies. In the first study, about 80 healthy adults in a good sustained relationship were recruited.The study used the Short Dark Triad 3 (SD3) measure the 3 dark features of psychopaths by asking the questions like “it’s true that I can be mean to others”, narcissism “I like to get acquainted with important people” and Machiavellianism (e.g., “it’s not wise to tell your secrets”).
In the second study, the researchers focused on the “successful” psychopathic people — college students. The researchers made assumption that the primary psychopaths have positive correlation with high grey matter density rather than secondary psychopath.
The study result demonstrated the increased density of grey matter in those subjects from the MRI scan and the grey matter density in primary psychopathy is similar to secondary psychopathy.
There are several limitations in the study. The study contained small sample size, the subjects in the study were mainly college students and subjects in a romantic relationship, the study probably could not be applied to the public population and so on. So, there’s more work need to done in the future study.
Dr Lasko from the Department of Psychologyin VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences, who conducted the study, said that these are important findings to explain the reason why some psychiatric patients are be able to control themselves versus other “unsuccessful” psychiatric patients.
For more information, please visit Personality Neuroscience.
Questions: What are your thoughts on this research?
Follow Medication Health News on social media — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Have a question? We can help you to answer it — Give us a call at (617) 732–2759.
