Aberrant Paralimbic Gray Matter in Incarcerated Male Adolescents With Psychopathic Traits

Ermer, Elsa; Cope, Lora M.; Nyalakanti, Prashanth K.; Calhoun, Vince D.; Kiehl, Kent A.

doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2012.10.013

Cited by 104 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…7,60 In sum, our findings reflect the impact of abuse on cortico-limbic areas implicated previously in behavioral and emotional control functions. The medial temporal lobe and interconnected limbic structures are involved in the pathophysiology of both internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, including ODD/CD, 61 ASB, 62 and depression, 63 potentially because they reflect underlying deficits in emotion processing or regulation that are relevant to these disorders.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child Abuse, Neural Structure, and Adolescent Psychopathology: A Longitudinal Study

Busso

McLaughlin

Brueck

et al. 2017

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psych

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Objective Child abuse exerts a deleterious impact on a broad array of mental health outcomes. However, the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate this association remain poorly characterized. Here, we use a longitudinal design to prospectively identify neural mediators of the association between child abuse and psychiatric disorders in a community sample of adolescents. Method Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and assessments of mental health were acquired for 51 adolescents (aged 13–20; M=16.96; SD=1.51), 19 of whom were exposed to physical or sexual abuse. Participants were assessed for abuse exposure (Time 1), participated in MRI scanning and a diagnostic structured interview (Time 2), and two years later were followed-up to assess psychopathology (Time 3). We examined associations between child abuse and neural structure, and identified whether abuse-related differences in neural structure prospectively predicted psychiatric symptoms. Results Abuse was associated with reduced cortical thickness in medial and lateral prefrontal and temporal lobe regions. Thickness of the left and right parahippocampal gyrus predicted antisocial behavior symptoms, and thickness of the middle temporal gyrus predicted symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. Thickness of the left parahippocampal gyrus mediated the longitudinal association of abuse with antisocial behavior. Conclusion Child abuse is associated with widespread disruptions in cortical structure, and these disruptions are selectively associated with increased vulnerability to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Identifying predictive biomarkers of vulnerability following childhood maltreatment may uncover neurodevelopmental mechanisms linking environmental experience with the onset of psychopathology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child Abuse, Neural Structure, and Adolescent Psychopathology: A Longitudinal Study

Busso

McLaughlin

Brueck

et al. 2017

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psych

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“…Following Ermer and colleagues (Ermer et al, 2013; Ermer et al, 2012), we conducted Monte Carlo simulations in AlphaSim (Ward, 2000) to determine that a 1427 voxel extent at a height threshold of p < .05 uncorrected yielded a family-wise error rate (FWE) corrected threshold of p < .05, accounting for spatial correlations between gray matter volumes in neighboring voxels.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abnormal brain structure in youth who commit homicide

Cope

Ermer

Gaudet

et al. 2014

NeuroImage: Clinical

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BackgroundViolence that leads to homicide results in an extreme financial and emotional burden on society. Juveniles who commit homicide are often tried in adult court and typically spend the majority of their lives in prison. Despite the enormous costs associated with homicidal behavior, there have been no serious neuroscientific studies examining youth who commit homicide.MethodsHere we use neuroimaging and voxel-based morphometry to examine brain gray matter in incarcerated male adolescents who committed homicide (n = 20) compared with incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide (n = 135). Two additional control groups were used to understand further the nature of gray matter differences: incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide matched on important demographic and psychometric variables (n = 20) and healthy participants from the community (n = 21).ResultsCompared with incarcerated adolescents who did not commit homicide (n = 135), incarcerated homicide offenders had reduced gray matter volumes in the medial and lateral temporal lobes, including the hippocampus and posterior insula. Feature selection and support vector machine learning classified offenders into the homicide and non-homicide groups with 81% overall accuracy.ConclusionsOur results indicate that brain structural differences may help identify those at the highest risk for committing serious violent offenses.

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“…First, evidence that youth with CU traits exhibit structural abnormalities similar to those of psychopathic adults [31, 83, 84] lends support to the speculation that there is a neurodevelopmental basis for the core interpersonal-affective dysfunction in psychopathy [85]. For example, adolescents with psychopathic traits show decreased gray matter volume in a number of brain regions associated with emotion processing including OFC, bilateral temporal poles, and posterior cingulate cortex [86]. Also, similar to adults with psychopathy [81], evidence suggests youth with CU traits show increased caudate nucleus and ventral striatal gray matter volume [84].…”

Section: Development Of Psychopathic Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Severe and Chronic Violence Among Youth: The Role of Psychopathic Traits and Reward Processing

Reidy¹,

Krusemark

Kosson

et al. 2017

Child Psychiatry Hum Dev

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Psychopathic traits are a manifestation of a personality pathology that comprises a core affective-interpersonal dysfunction (callous-unemotional traits) and an impulsive-antisocial behavioral component. Of particular importance, psychopathic traits are associated with the perpetration of some of the most severe acts of violence, and they appear to indicate a subset of youth at risk for earlier onset, greater frequency, and persistence of violent offending. Although these youth represent a minority of the population, they commit a significant proportion of the violence in the general community. In our review, we highlight evidence of a unique neurobiological predisposition that underlies the core affective deficits and describe contemporary accounts for the developmental processes leading to the antisocial behavior associated with psychopathy. Current evidence suggests that, for this subset of youth, the structure and function of neural circuitry supporting emotion processing, reward learning, decision making, and the development of emotion related to empathy may be crucial to understanding why they are at risk for violence. In particular, a reward dominant pattern of neurobehavioral conditioning may explain how these youth progress to some of the most severe and persistent forms of violence. However, this pattern of conditioning may also be essential to the primary prevention of such deleterious behavior. We suspect that effective strategies to prevent such violence may ultimately be informed by understanding these affective and motivational mechanisms.

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Aberrant Paralimbic Gray Matter in Incarcerated Male Adolescents With Psychopathic Traits

Cited by 104 publications

References 54 publications

Child Abuse, Neural Structure, and Adolescent Psychopathology: A Longitudinal Study

Child Abuse, Neural Structure, and Adolescent Psychopathology: A Longitudinal Study

Abnormal brain structure in youth who commit homicide

The Development of Severe and Chronic Violence Among Youth: The Role of Psychopathic Traits and Reward Processing

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