Neurobiological findings of the psychopathic personality in adults: One century of history

Abstract This review intends to produce a historical overview of the psychobiological bases of psychopathy from the first studies using biological or neuropsychological measures up to the present state of knowledge. The reviewed studies were retrieved from multiple databases, following the procedures of the Cochrane Collaboration. Of the 205 documents obtained, 49 were selected for further analysis and 31 were considered eligible for inclusion. Furthermore, eight studies were included through manual search. The objectives, sample (age, percentage of male, type of sample), country of origin of the studies, language, design, instruments, and results and main conclusions were extracted from each study. Overall, the results reinforce the idea that psychopathic traits are associated with abnormalities in the way the brain processes environmental emotional information, and that the fundamental cognitive properties related to attention maintain or worsen these abnormalities. In some cases, changes in attention explain, by themselves, the abnormalities in emotional processing. Future studies using neurophysiological paradigms would be a great asset to help differentiate, at a neurocognitive level, the personality structures characterized by pronounced antisocial behavior, in order to improve the understanding of their heterogeneous etiologies.