The intrinsic functional connectivity of psychopathy and its relation to self-control

Previous research has found functional connectivity in various networks to be altered in psychopathy and has theorised a link between these networks and the self-control-related deficits observed in psychopathy. However, this theory has yet to be tested adequately and empirically. The present study investigated the association between psychopathy, self-control, and intrinsic functional connectivity in 179 healthy adults from the MPI Leipzig Mind Brain Body dataset. Participants completed an affective switching task and questionnaires relating to psychopathy and self-control and underwent resting-state fMRI scans. Functional connectivity matrices were extracted for each subject, and network-based statistics was used to identify intrinsic resting-state functional networks associated with psychopathy scores. Significant networks that are positively and negatively associated with psychopathy emerged in the analyses. The functional connections that correlated positively with psychopathy was mostly characterised by strong connections between the default mode network and salience network, while the functional connections negatively correlated with psychopathy was largely characterised by strong within-dorsal attention network connectivity. Both the psychopathy-associated positive and negative networks were significantly correlated with measures of self-control and impulsivity. Furthermore, the negative network mediated the relationship between psychopathy and affective task-switching. Findings suggest that alterations in intrinsic functional connectivity are significantly implicated in psychopathy; these alterations possibly account for some self-control related deficits observed in psychopathy.