Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths

Psychopathic individuals are characterized by impaired affective processing, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, poor planning skills and heightened aggressiveness with poor self-regulation. Based on brain self-regulation studies using neurofeedback of Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) in disorders associ...

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Main Authors:	Konicar, Lilian, Veit, Ralf, Eisenbarth, Hedwig, Barth, Beatrix, Tonin, Paolo, Strehl, Ute, Birbaumer, Niels
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Publishing Group 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4371087/

id	pubmed-4371087
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-43710872015-04-06 Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths Konicar, Lilian Veit, Ralf Eisenbarth, Hedwig Barth, Beatrix Tonin, Paolo Strehl, Ute Birbaumer, Niels Article Psychopathic individuals are characterized by impaired affective processing, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, poor planning skills and heightened aggressiveness with poor self-regulation. Based on brain self-regulation studies using neurofeedback of Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) in disorders associated with a dysregulation of cortical activity thresholds and evidence of deficient cortical functioning in psychopathy, a neurobiological approach seems to be promising in the treatment of psychopathy. The results of our intensive brain regulation intervention demonstrate, that psychopathic offenders are able to gain control of their brain excitability over fronto-central brain areas. After SCP self-regulation training, we observed reduced aggression, impulsivity and behavioral approach tendencies, as well as improvements in behavioral-inhibition and increased cortical sensitivity for error-processing. This study demonstrates improvements on the neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective level in severe psychopathic offenders after SCP-neurofeedback training and could constitute a novel neurobiologically-based treatment for a seemingly change-resistant group of criminal psychopaths. Nature Publishing Group 2015-03-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4371087/ /pubmed/25800672 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep09426 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Konicar, Lilian Veit, Ralf Eisenbarth, Hedwig Barth, Beatrix Tonin, Paolo Strehl, Ute Birbaumer, Niels
spellingShingle	Konicar, Lilian Veit, Ralf Eisenbarth, Hedwig Barth, Beatrix Tonin, Paolo Strehl, Ute Birbaumer, Niels Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
author_facet	Konicar, Lilian Veit, Ralf Eisenbarth, Hedwig Barth, Beatrix Tonin, Paolo Strehl, Ute Birbaumer, Niels
author_sort	Konicar, Lilian
title	Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
title_short	Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
title_full	Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
title_fullStr	Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
title_full_unstemmed	Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
title_sort	brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
description	Psychopathic individuals are characterized by impaired affective processing, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, poor planning skills and heightened aggressiveness with poor self-regulation. Based on brain self-regulation studies using neurofeedback of Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) in disorders associated with a dysregulation of cortical activity thresholds and evidence of deficient cortical functioning in psychopathy, a neurobiological approach seems to be promising in the treatment of psychopathy. The results of our intensive brain regulation intervention demonstrate, that psychopathic offenders are able to gain control of their brain excitability over fronto-central brain areas. After SCP self-regulation training, we observed reduced aggression, impulsivity and behavioral approach tendencies, as well as improvements in behavioral-inhibition and increased cortical sensitivity for error-processing. This study demonstrates improvements on the neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective level in severe psychopathic offenders after SCP-neurofeedback training and could constitute a novel neurobiologically-based treatment for a seemingly change-resistant group of criminal psychopaths.
publisher	Nature Publishing Group
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4371087/
_version_	1613202601449357312

Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths

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