[spangry]

Seems pretty quiet in here, so I figure I'll do a bit of spruiking. The article is definitely worth the read; I found it quite riveting.

The most interesting part is the suggestion that there might be effective methods of treating psychopathy/sociopathy. This would be groundbreaking if true, as psychopathy is generally thought to be untreatable. In fact, it has been observed that treatment will often just teach psychopaths how to more effectively manipulate others.

Another interesting bit: brain scan studies show that psychopaths have smaller amygdalae compared to non-psychopaths. The amygdala is a part of the brain that processes emotions, particularly fear, and is implicated in 'fear conditioning'. It's basically your brain's "module" for heuristic threat recognition. For example, the amygdala of an arachnophobe will light up and send the "pump adrenaline" signal if they are exposed to a spider. In contrast, psychopaths don't seem to experience fear and have difficulty recognising this emotion in others:

"I don’t know what you call this emotion," one psychopathic prisoner said, looking at a photo of a fearful face, "but it’s what people look like just before you stab them."