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Increased DLPFC activity during moral decision-making in psychopathy

Molecular Psychiatry volume 14, pages 909–911 (2009)Cite this article

Tassy et al.1 inquire as to whether psychopathy was associated with differential activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in our study of moral decision-making in psychopathy.2 This is an important question that we had not considered previously. Tassy et al.1 also ask about behavioral responding and activity in another relevant brain region, the insula. Here we provide additional analyses of our data. We find that psychopathy is associated with increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during emotional moral decision-making. No significant relationship was observed between psychopathy and behavioral responses to the dilemmas. These findings, in conjunction with the reduced activity in emotion-related regions reported previously,2 suggest that psychopathic individuals may use alternative strategies to make moral judgments; alternative interpretations are also discussed.

Tassy et al.1 highlight the important role of the DLPFC in recent theories regarding brain functioning in moral judgment. In particular, the DLPFC has been hypothesized to have at least three distinctive roles: (1) to provide cognitive control to override prepotent social-emotional responses elicited by the dilemmas,3 (2) to facilitate abstract reasoning (e.g., cost-benefit analyses)3, 4 and (3) to generate self-centered and other-aversive emotions (e.g., anger, frustration or moral disgust).5 Tassy et al.1 suggest that the examination of this region in our sample of individuals with varying degrees of psychopathic traits may help to clarify the role of DLPFC in moral judgment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    A L Glenn

  2. Departments of Criminology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    A Raine

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    R A Schug

  4. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    L Young

  5. Departments of Psychology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Biological Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    M Hauser

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  1. A L Glenn
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  2. A Raine
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  3. R A Schug
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  4. L Young
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  5. M Hauser
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Correspondence to A L Glenn.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Molecular Psychiatry website (http://www.nature.com/mp)

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Glenn, A., Raine, A., Schug, R. et al. Increased DLPFC activity during moral decision-making in psychopathy. Mol Psychiatry 14, 909–911 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2009.76

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