Smell, an Interesting Marker for Psychopathic Traits

A recent study has revealed another distinguishing factor of psychopaths, who were found to have a very poor sense of smell.

As we all know, psychopaths lack empathy, and exhibit anti-social behavior. Now, this research has also found that their capacity to smell is also impaired.

This impairment is connected to dysfunction in an area of the brain called the orbito-frontal complex (OFC).

A poor sense of smell does not by itself indicate that someone is a psychopath. Victims of schizophrenia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease also portray a poor sense of smell.

"Olfactory measures represent a potentially interesting marker for psychopathic traits, because performance expectancies are unclear in odour tests and may therefore be less susceptible to attempts to fake 'good' or 'bad' responses," researchers said.

Source: Medindia

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