Scanning Psychopaths - 06/12/2007
It is a rare event that patient 13 is let out of the high security Dr S. van Mesdag Clinic in Groningen, the Netherlands, and he is making the most of the attention he is getting. Already, the prison guards have had to accompany him from the University of Groningen’s functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to the toilet four times in two hours. The guards indulge him with a shrug. Research psychologist Harma Meffert, who has recruited him for her study, is just as tolerant. That can’t be easy, given that she has to spend at least 20 minutes resettling him into the scanner after each interruption.
Wearing nothing but blue cotton surgical pyjamas and a constant smile, patient 13 doesn’t seem to present much of a threat. In fact with his jewellery removed and his tat- toos covered he looks decidedly small and vulnerable. But no one is forgetting why he was recruited to Meffert’s study. Patient 13 has scored the maximum possible on the Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R) rating scale, the ubiquitous tool psychiatrists use to identify the personality and behavioural traits that define the clini- cal syndrome ‘psychopathy’. Lack of empathy is a key feature.
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