Mapping the Structural Brain Network of Psychopathy: Convergent Evidence from Humans and Chimpanzees

Abstract

Psychopathy, a condition characterized by profound emotional and interpersonal deficits, has long been hypothesized to stem, in part, from structural brain abnormalities. Yet neuroimaging findings remain inconsistent. To address these discrepancies, we applied a novel structural network mapping approach combined with cross-species analyses. Traditional meta-analysis revealed weak spatial convergence across 20 samples. Nevertheless, we found that heterogeneous peak locations coalesced into a distributed set of regions encompassing the insular, and prefrontal cortices. This network overlapped strikingly (r = .93) with a lesion-derived network causally linked to antisocial behaviour, and variation within it predicted volumetric risk scores in both humans (n = 107, R{superscript 2} = .16) and chimpanzees (n = 148, R{superscript 2} = .21). These findings suggest that psychopathy reflects abnormalities across a collection of distributed regions rather than isolated areas, providing a unifying explanation for decades of inconsistent results and advancing our understanding of its clinical, biological, and evolutionary bases.