ABSTRACT
In 1980, Gorenstein and Newman, then both graduate students at the University of Indiana, published a theoretical article in which they suggested parallels between psychopathy and behaviors seen in laboratory rats with lesions of the septum and frontal cortex of the brain, areas thought to be involved in the inhibitory regulation of behavior. Such animals are less deterred than normal rats by punishment of previously rewarded responses and seem less able to inhibit responses when periods of nonresponding are required to achieve a food reward. Because these behaviors are reminiscent of the actions of some psychopaths, it was suggested that psychopathy in humans might be a consequence of inherited or acquired defects in the septal or frontal brain areas.
