Module 11: READINGS (1) Flashcards
Impaired Integration and Perceptual Binding Model Steps:
- Psychopathic Individuals are unable to rapidly bind multidimensional sensory information into a unified mental representation.
- This impaired ability to integrate sensory information produces a perceptual bottleneck in which only information directly relevant to their goal-orientated behaviour is processed, this is a form of sequential processing unique to psychopaths.
- Their characteristic of impaired integration has a reciprocal relationship with their brain structures, learning and neural activity.
- Habitual use of the perceptual bottleneck causes white matter tracts in and between brain corticals that produces a unique brain topography in psychopathic individuals in which there is reduced connectivity between neural networks during effortful sensory processing (i.e., it’s a context-specific deficit).
- Psychopath’s topography profile enables them to reduce distractibility, shallow processing of extraneous (not relevant) information.
- Their impaired ability to integrate sensory
information into a singular representation interacts with psychopaths environment (social or interpersonal factors) to produce antisocial goals and behavioural sets.
Psychopathy is a personality trait characterised by…
Impaired neural connectivity, impaired integration of multidimensional sensory information into a single representation, that results in a habitual form of processing often describes as a perceptual bottleneck which interacts with the development of brain structure and can leave brain area’s underdeveloped.
What four neural systems involved in the processing and integration of sensory information?
- Cognitive Control Network:
- Frontoparietal control network (FpCN) is important for goal-directed behaviour and selective attention.
- Cingulo-Opercular Network:
- Works in conjunction with the FpCN in beginning and continuing set tasks, and switching between introspective or goal-directed states. - Attentional Control:
a. Dorsal Attentional Network:
- Orients attention towards the environment by generating top-down signal that biases our sensory processing towards preexisting goals and expectations.
- focuses on goal-oriented behaviours.
b. Ventral Attentional Network:
- Activated by the presence of salient task relevant stimuli.
- Important for attentional disengagement, shifts our attention from goal-orientated behaviors in the dorsal stream and places it towards stimuli salient in our environment.
- focuses on salient environmental stimuli.
- Default Mode Network (DMN):
a. Collection of brain regions which act synchronously.
b. DMN is deactivated during goal-orientated or attentionally demanding tasks.
c. Has greater activation at a baseline state for perceptual demand.
d. Important for stimulus-independent thought (i.e., self-referential thought, perspective taking and thinking about your future). - Salience Network (SN):
a. Overlaps with Cingulo-Opercular Network.
b. Is activated by cognitive, biological or emotional salience.
c. Important for switching between salient stimuli to working memory to form to facilitate associative learning.
d. Functional flexibility of the SN allows for behavioral adaption (i.e., to adapt behaviors based on memory of aversive consequences).
What is Passive Avoidance?
Why
refers to psychopaths’ inability to learn to inhibit their behavioural response in order to effectively avoid punishment because it requires associative learning (the integration of present stimuli to past experiences and reflection on potential maladaptive consequences of our behaviours) = leads to a persistent self-regulation deficit.
Topographical Abnormalities in the brain lead to:
> leads to the inability to effectively switch attention between internal and external states.
affective, cognitive and language deficits.
shallow processing and stops information from being elaborated on or an association being formed to present and past knowledge.
Impaired Intergation
Impaired integration makes…
certain tasks more demanding, thereby psychopathic individuals habitually do not process distracting/peripheral information which can leave emotional systems underdeveloped in adulthood and become an automatic process used all the time.
Causes them to engage in alternative cognitive processes (i.e., instrumental and proactive aggression).
what is the hierarchal maturation of the brain over development trajectory?
the primary sensorimotor connectivity region develops early in life and becomes more distributed in its organization as people age and more connections between regions are made, efficiency increases and adolescence are better able to cope with the cognitive demand of higher-level processing.
Example affective deficits II can lead to:
CU-traits are due to
Perspective taking is due to… and causes…
Callousness is the result of underdeveloped
connectivity between the SN and DMN circuitry
(emotional-processing systems).
Reduced communication in the insula (top-
down/bottom-up processing) impairs psychopaths’
ability to engage in empathetic perspective-taking, or
introspective awareness.
Insufficient perspective-taking in childhood leads to
antisocial behaviours in adulthood.
Makes certain tasks more demanding.
Callousness is the result of underdeveloped connectivity between the __ and __.
SN and DMN.
Deficits of psychopathy are __ and not ___
context-specific and not global.
(3) Emotional Deficits occur if:
(A) Stimuli are multidimensional.
(B) Are secondary to attentional focus (peripheral).
(C) Requires linkage to memories.
(4) Psychopaths show normal affective performance if:
(A) Minimal integration is required.
(B) There is a limited amount of information.
(C) Affective information is the focus.
(D) Information does not need to be intergraded with
peripheral information.
Example Language deficits:
o Psychopaths struggle with abstract words and tend to
stick with their literal translations.
o Impaired synchronization of neural networks causes
deficits in language comprehension (that is specific to
abstract words) and increases processing demands.
Do psychopaths intend to do harm?
o Psychopaths do not intend to do harm: their antisocial behaviors are an accumulation of the consequences of a perceptual bottleneck and topography which causes them to habitually ignore distracting stimuli in their environment.
Examples of learning deficits:
Passive avoidance and the struggle to link stimuli to past experience or knowledge which produces a self-regulation deficit.
