Gender and Hemispheric Asymmetries in Acquired Sociopathy

Abstract

The emergence of enduring antisocial personality changes in previously normal individuals, or “acquired sociopathy,” has consistently been reported in patients with bilateral injuries of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Over the past three decades, cases of acquired sociopathy with (a) bilateral or (b) unilateral sparing of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex have been reported. These cases indicate that at least in a few individuals (a') neural structures beyond the ventromedial prefrontal cortex are also critical for normal social behavior, and (b') the neural underpinnings of social cognition may be lateralized to one cerebral hemisphere. Moreover, researchers have presented evidence that lesion laterality and gender may interact in the production of acquired sociopathy. In the present review, we carried out a comprehensive literature survey seeking possible interactions between gender and hemispheric asymmetry in acquired sociopathy. We found 85 cases of acquired sociopathy due to bilateral (N = 48) and unilateral (N = 37) hemispheric injuries. A significant association between acquired sociopathy and right hemisphere damage was found in men, whereas lesions were bilateral in most women with acquired sociopathy. The present survey shows that: (i) the number of well-documented single-cases of acquired sociopathy is surprisingly small given the length of the historical record; (ii) acquired sociopathy was significantly more frequent in men after an injury of the right or of both cerebral hemispheres; and (iii) in most women who developed acquired sociopathy the injuries affected both cerebral hemispheres. These findings may be especially valuable to neuroscientists and to functional neurosurgeons in particular for the planning of tumor resections as well as for the choice of the best targets for therapeutic neuromodulation.

Cortical and subcortical grey matter correlates of psychopathic traits in a Japanese community sample of young adults: sex and configurations of factors’ level matter!

“…Furthermore, these results from a community sample are broadly consistent with findings from more extreme samples (i.e. neurological patients) where there also seems to be evidence of sexual dimorphism in acquired sociopathy patients ( de Oliveira-Souza et al. 2019 ).…”

Perspective Chapter: Neuropsychology of Aggression in Psychopathy and Sociopathy – Insights for the Treatment and Study of Antisocial Personality Disorder

“…Once they encounter major or persistent stressors, like chronic child abuse or community violence, then ROIs begin exhibit disordered activation which could lead to ASPD [79]. Across all data in Table 2, individuals living with sociopathy tend to exhibit similar activation and functional connectivity issues with the OFC and mPFC to those living with psychopathy [69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77]. Like in psychopathy, individual living with sociopathy tend to process behavioral stimuli in their OFC in a typical manner, but these inputs are coming from disordered social and moral reasoning and decreased capacity for impulse exhibited by the mPFC [69,70,80].…”

“…The primary difference in presentations of sociopathy and aggression, however, come with amygdala activity. According to data in Table 2, individuals living with sociopathy appear to exhibit consistent amygdala activation when engaging in acts of aggression [70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77]. In contrast to psychopathy, individuals living with sociopathy appear to exhibit more functional connectivity between the amygdala, thalamus, Neuropsychology of Aggression in Psychopathy and Sociopathy: Insights for the Treatment and… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106436 brainstem, and thus the CNS [81].…”

Reference values regarding measure of Basic Empathy Scale in forensic adolescents.

“…It is generally believed that empathy shapes the landscape of our social lives by motivating prosocial and caregiving behaviors, inhibiting aggression, and facilitating cooperation between members of a similar social group (Decety et al, 2016). On other hand, empathic dysfunction has been associated with conduct disorder (CD), antisocial personality disorder, acquired sociopathy (i.e., people who develop sociopathy after damage to the brain hemispheres; de Oliveira-Souza et al, 2019; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004; Miller & Eisenberg, 1988; Spinella, 2005), and psychopathy (Blair, 2005). Besides problems in social communication/interaction, resulting in unstable and impaired relationships, a lack of empathy is often associated with callous and unemotional behavior, violence, aggression, and criminality (Blair et al, 2005; Reniers et al, 2011).…”