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Adults with psychopathy have lower amygdala activation in response to fear than do adults without psychopathy. To see if these findings are present earlier in life, researchers studied activation of the amygdala and the anterior cingulate in boys with conduct disorder and callous-unemotional (CU) traits and in healthy controls (age range, 10–12 years). The children, part of a larger twins study, underwent functional MRI scans while being shown standardized pictures of fearful and neutral faces and asked to identify the sex of the faces.
Of the 138 children who underwent scanning, only 30 tolerated the scans, performed adequately on the task, and were not twins from concordant pairs (13 boys with conduct problems and CU traits and 17 IQ- and …