GOP Congressman on Government shutdown: “This is my idea of fun”.

[starroute]

49. So some are clueless and the rest are psychopaths

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/24/psychopaths-empathy-neurological-basis-brain_n_3984515.html

Researchers scanned the brains of the participants while showing them images depicting physical pain, such as a finger getting caught in a door or a toe caught under a heavy object. The participants were told to imagine the accident happening to themselves or to someone else. They were also shown images of neutral ojects, such as a hand on a doorknob.

When the highly psychopathic individuals imagined the accidents happening to themselves, their brains lit up in the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, the somatosensory cortex and the right amygdala -- all areas involved in empathy. The response was quite pronounced, suggesting psychopathic individuals were sensitive to thoughts of pain.

But when the highly psychopathic inmates imagined the accident happening to others, their brains failed to light up in the regions associated with empathy. In fact, an area involved in pleasure, the ventral striatum, lit up instead. Furthermore, these individuals showed abnormal connectivity between the insula and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for empathetic decision-making. ...

The strange patterns of brain activation and connectivity in highly psychopathic individuals suggest they did not experience empathy when imagining the pain of others, and possibly took pleasure in it.