Professor Stephen Scott, from the Institute of Psychiatry, said that children who displayed ‘callous unemotional traits’ were not properly provided for by the mental health system, telegraph.co.uk wrote.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today Program: "Anti-social behavior in children that is persistent and outside the normal quantity is rather un-talked about because it's rather shameful.
"About five percent of children have a severe level of anti-social behavior. But of those about a fifth — so fully one percent of children — have these so-called callous unemotional traits.
"We don't like using the word psychopath for under-18s but there is a high continuity to becoming so-called anti-social personality disorder with psychopathic traits."
He said the condition was ‘rather unrecognized’, and was almost always inherited and not a result of poor upbringing or environment.
"When we scan their brains we find that an area called the amygdala, which is where you acknowledge emotions and process them, is completely quiet and flat.
"So they will understand what's going on, unlike someone with autism, who doesn't quite get the social signs, but they don't care," he said.
He said such children were ‘punishment-insensitive’ and would be ‘insouciant’ to penalties such as being sent to their room or having their sweets taken away.
The program also interviewed a child, one of Professor Scott's patients, whose parents were appealing for help because of his violent and antisocial behavior.
The young teenager — called ‘Max’ on the program — had threatened other children with a knife and could not be left alone with his sister because of his violence.
His adoptive parents said he would have to be put back into care if they did not secure him a place at a residential school because they were unable to cope.
His mum said: "It's not playground fights — he's never ever gone and fought against a peer or an equal for any reason. It's always he's just unhappy and he just goes for someone to let out his unhappiness."