Cold and unemotional children tend to have smaller brains along with differences in functional connectivity.
Children with psychopathic tendencies have widespread differences in the structure of their brain.
Fledgling psychopaths have smaller brains and unusual functional connectivity.
The findings could help explain why some children seem to lack empathy and show little remorse — too key components of psychopathy.
It suggest some children are born with psychopathic tendencies.
Dr John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry, said:
“How is it that some children are born with an indifference to the suffering of others?
This is an important scientific question about the neural basis for empathy.
It is also an important humanistic question as the lack of a capacity for empathy presents a fundamental challenge to living collaboratively within a community.
This study highlights important deficits affecting higher brain centers that may contribute to callousness.”
The study involved over 2,000 10-year-old children whose brains were scanned to look for structural differences.
The results showed that cold and unemotional children tended to have smaller brains along with differences in how areas of their brain were connected.
Critical differences were seen in areas of the brain important for decision making, behavioural and emotional control.
Dr Koen Bolhuis, the study’s first author, said:
“In addition, our study was the first to examine neuroanatomical features of callous traits in a sample with an equal distribution of boys and girls, making it possible to test for sex differences.
This could mean that the brain development related to callous traits differs for girls and boys.”
The study was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry (Bolhuis et al., 2018).
