Antisocial Personality Disorder Essay

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Mayra Gallegos Psychology 210 Professor Smith Tuesday/Thursday 4/25/14 Library Assignment 2: Antisocial Personality Disorder Finger 2011 Finger, Marsh, K. Blair, Reid, Sims, Ng, Pine, and R. Blair wanted to know if youths who have conduct disorder or oppositional defiance disorder have abnormalities in their amygydala and orbitalfrontal cortex. The experimenters used an fMRI to check for abnormalities. Youths who have conduct disorder or oppositional defiance disorder tend to show more aggression and antisocial behavior. These youths also have a higher risk of being antisocial or even criminals in the future. Although psychopathic traits can be caught early, psychologists do not fully understand pathophysiology. In previous studies experimenters have found that subjects who have psychopathic traits also have issues with emotional learning. They found that the traits showed damage in the stimulus-reinforcement learning and in decision making using the passive avoidance task. According to previous studies the amygdala is where the stimulus-associations take place, which then the information is thought to be sent to the orbitalfrontal cortex through the ventral striatum. Then in the orbitalfrontal cortex processes the information and helps in the decision making. The experimenters in this present study hypothesized that the youths with conduct disorder or oppositional defiance disorder would have damage in some part of the system, either in the amygdale, orbitalfrontal cortex, or the ventral striatum that connects the two. The experimenters decided to test their theory with a passive avoidance learning task, which require participants to respond to stimuli that lead to reward, and not to respond to stimuli that lead to punishmen... ... middle of paper ... ...bly responsible for their riskier behavior which leads them to being convicted for their crimes. Finger (2011), Ermer (2012), and Yang (2010) were all interested in how abnormalities in certain areas of the brain (amygdale, orbitalfrontal cortex, etc.) affected or led to certain characteristics in psychopaths. Finger studied the system of decision-making in psychopaths, Ermer researched the link between damage in certain regions of the brain are what causes the traits of psychopathology, and Yang wanted to see if the amount and thickness of certain areas of the brain had anything to do with the psychopaths being able to live among others undetected. All three studies linked certain areas in the brain that are thought to either help in emotional learning or decision-making to their explanation that abnormalities in these area are responsible for psychotic traits.

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