In this new study from Jean Decety (one of the preeminent scholars of empathy), he and his research team examined the ability of psychopaths (or those who score highly on the PCL-R) to experience empathy for others’ pain.

When the most highly psychopathic participants imagined pain to themselves, their brains showed a typical neural response within the regions involved in empathy for pain, including the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, somatosensory cortex, and the right amygdala. The increase in brain activity in these regions was unusually pronounced, suggesting that psychopathic people are sensitive to the thought of of their own pain.

But when participants imagined…