Fear conditioning in psychopaths: event-related potentials and peripheral measures.

Aversive pavlovian delay conditioning was investigated in a sample of 11 criminal psychopaths as identified by using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and 11 matched healthy controls. A painful electric stimulus served as unconditioned stimulus and neutral faces as conditioned stimuli. Event-related potentials, startle response potentiation, skin conductance response, corrugator activity, and heart rate were assessed, along with valence, arousal, and contingency ratings of the CS and US.

Gender differences in the processing of standardized emotional visual stimuli in humans: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Pictures from the International Affective Picture System were used in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to assess gender differences in brain activation in ten male and ten female volunteers. The affectively positive, negative and neutral pictures were presented for 750 ms in a single event design and were carefully matched for arousal, valence and stimulus content. Men and women showed no significant difference in valence, arousal, skin conductance response and startle modulation.