Högskolan i Skövde

Science has recently begun showing interest in the different mechanisms of the psychopathic brain, and current scientific research points to deficits in the structural and functional brain regions of psychopaths. Psychopathy is a disorder distinguished by its persistent antisocial behavior, emotional callousness, grandiose self-estimation, and lack of empathy. Further, it is also a disorder which is hard to classify. Notably, the Hare-Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is the most common clinical rating scale used to diagnose psychopaths. This current systematic review aims to scrutinize literature that reviews psychopathy, delving into articles on neural correlates of emotion recognition of psychopaths. By using the PRISMA guidelines, this systematic research was conducted through, MEDLINE EBSCO, Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus. Through predisposed eligibility criteria, articles were chosen and reviewed. All selected articles found a significant result where psychopaths performed poorly on emotion recognition and important areas such as the prefrontal cortex and amygdala could be seen to perform worse. Notably, due to different test methods, one is unable to properly evaluate the results between the studies. Therefore, upcoming studies need to shed light on performing the same tests to provide stronger and equal evidence. This systematic review was done to shed better light on the disorder.