sherlock holmes-nya pake internet explorer :( *salah fokus* 2010/8/22 冴羽獠 (Ryo Saeba) <[email protected]> > > > malah makin bingung. di wiki pun nggak ada beda yang jelas. intinya adalah, > mereka bisa membedakan mana yang benar dan mana yang salah, they just don't > care. > > Portrait of a sociopath > > From Craig, M., Catani, M., Deeley, Q., Latham, R., Daly, E., Kanaan, R., > Picchioni, M., McGuire, P., Fahy, T., & Murphy, D. (2009). Altered > connections on the road to psychopathy Molecular Psychiatry, 14 (10), 946-953 > DOI: 10.1038/mp.2009.40 > > The manipulative con-man. The guy who lies to your face, even when he doesn’t > have to. The child who tortures animals. The cold-blooded killer. Psychopaths > are characterised by an absence of empathy and poor impulse control, with a > total lack of conscience. About 1% of the total population can be defined as > psychopaths, according to a detailed psychological profile checklist. They > tend to be egocentric, callous, manipulative, deceptive, superficial, > irresponsible and parasitic, even predatory. The majority of psychopaths are > not violent and many do very well in jobs where their personality traits are > advantageous and their social tendencies tolerated. However, some have a > predisposition to calculated, “instrumental” violence; violence that is > cold-blooded, planned and goal-directed. Psychopaths are vastly > over-represented among criminals; it is estimated they make up about 20% of > the inmates of most prisons. They commit over half of all violent crimes and > are 3-4 times more likely to re-offend. They are almost entirely refractory > to rehabilitation. These are not nice people. > > So how did they get that way? Is it an innate biological condition, a result > of social experience, or an interaction between these factors? Longitudinal > studies have shown that the personality traits associated with psychopathy > are highly stable over time. Early warning signs including > “callous-unemotional traits” and antisocial behaviour can be identified in > childhood and are highly predictive of future psychopathy. Large-scale twin > studies have shown that these traits are highly heritable – identical twins, > who share 100% of their genes, are much more similar to each other in this > trait than fraternal twins, who share only 50% of their genes. In one study, > over 80% of the variation in the callous-unemotional trait across the > population was due to genetic differences. In contrast, the effect of a > shared family environment was almost nil. Psychopathy seems to be a lifelong > trait, or combination of traits, which are heavily influenced by genes and > hardly at all by social upbringing. > > The two defining characteristics of psychopaths, blunted emotional response > to negative stimuli, coupled with poor impulse control, can both be measured > in psychological and neuroimaging experiments. Several studies have found > decreased responsiveness of the amygdala to fearful or other negative stimuli > in psychopaths. They do not seem to process heavily loaded emotional words, > like “rape”, for example, any differently from how they process neutral > words, like “table”. This lack of response to negative stimuli can be > measured in other ways, such as the failure to induce a galvanic skin > response (heightened skin conduction due to sweating) when faced with an > impending electrical shock. Psychopaths have also been found to underactivate > limbic (emotional) regions of the brain during aversive learning, correlating > with an insensitivity to negative reinforcement. The psychopath really just > doesn’t care. In this, psychopaths differ from many people who are prone to > sudden, impulsive violence, in that those people tend to have a > hypersensitive negative emotional response to what would otherwise be > relatively innocuous stimuli. > > What these two groups have in common is poor impulse control. This faculty > relies on the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, most > particularly the orbitofrontal cortex. It is known that lesions to this part > of the brain impair planning, prediction of consequences, and inhibition of > socially unacceptable behaviour – the cognitive mechanisms of “free won’t”, > rather than free will. This brain region is also normally activated by > aversive learning, and this activation is also reduced in psychopaths. In > addition, both the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala show substantial > average reductions in size in psychopaths, suggesting a structural difference > in their brains. > > These findings have now been united by a recent study that directly analysed > connectivity between these two regions. Using diffusion tensor imaging (see > post of August 31st 2009), Craig and colleagues found that a measure of the > integrity of the axonal tract connecting these two regions, called the > uncinate fasciculus, was significantly reduced in psychopaths. Importantly, > connectivity of these regions to other parts of the brain was normal. These > data thus suggest a specific disruption of the network connecting > orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala in psychopaths, the degree of which > correlated strongly with the subjects’ scores on the psychopathy checklist. > > All of these findings are pointing to a picture of psychopathy as an innate, > genetically driven difference in connectivity between parts of the brain that > normally drive empathy, conscience and impulse control. Not a fault > necessarily, and not something that could be classified as a disease or that > is always a disadvantage. At a certain frequency in the population, the > traits of psychopathy may be highly advantageous to the individual. > > This conclusion has serious ethical and legal implications. Could a > psychopath mount a legal defense by saying “my brain made me do it”? Or my > “genes made me do it”? Is this any different from saying my rotten childhood > made me do it? Psychopaths know right from wrong – they just don’t care. That > is what society calls “bad”, not “mad”. But if they are constitutionally > incapable of caring, can they really be blamed for it? On the other hand, if > violent psychopaths are a continuing danger to society and completely > refractory to rehabilitation, what is to be done with them? Perhaps, as has > been proposed in the UK, people with the extreme psychopathic personality > profile (or maybe in the near future even a specific genetic profile?) should > be monitored or segregated even before they commit a crime. > > While it is crucial that these debates are informed by good science, these > issues have no clear-cut answers. They will be resolved on a pragmatic basis, > weighing the behaviour that society is willing to tolerate versus the rights > of the individual, whatever their brains look like, to define their own moral > standards. > > -- > http://ryosaeba.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/membedah-artikel-jiplakan-di-koran-anak-indonesia/ > > > >
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