Abnormal behavioral and neural responses in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during emotional interference for cognitive control in pedophilic sex offenders

Szczypiński, Jan; Wypych, Marek; Krasowska, Aleksandra; Wiśniewski, Paweł; Kopera, Maciej; Suszek, Hubert; Marchewka, Artur; Jakubczyk, Andrzej; Wojnar, Marcin

doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2022.04.012

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Studies have repeatedly shown that, especially in adolescents and young adults, the microstructure of WM in the corpus callosum was related to levels of risk taking ( 90 – 93 ). Thus, WM microstructure integrity and deviations in WM development have been linked to various complex cognitive abilities, most of which relate to higher-order cognitive control, reward processing, and impulse regulation, all of which are highly relevant in the forensic setting ( 14 , 40 , 94 – 96 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of risk—Using machine learning and structural neuroimaging to identify pedophilic offenders

et al. 2023

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BackgroundChild sexual abuse (CSA) has become a focal point for lawmakers, law enforcement, and mental health professionals. With high prevalence rates around the world and far-reaching, often chronic, individual, and societal implications, CSA and its leading risk factor, pedophilia, have been well investigated. This has led to a wide range of clinical tools and actuarial instruments for diagnosis and risk assessment regarding CSA. However, the neurobiological underpinnings of pedosexual behavior, specifically regarding hands-on pedophilic offenders (PO), remain elusive. Such biomarkers for PO individuals could potentially improve the early detection of high-risk PO individuals and enhance efforts to prevent future CSA.AimTo use machine learning and MRI data to identify PO individuals.MethodsFrom a single-center male cohort of 14 PO individuals and 15 matched healthy control (HC) individuals, we acquired diffusion tensor imaging data (anisotropy, diffusivity, and fiber tracking) in literature-based regions of interest (prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, and corpus callosum). We trained a linear support vector machine to discriminate between PO and HC individuals using these WM microstructure data. Post hoc, we investigated the PO model decision scores with respect to sociodemographic (age, education, and IQ) and forensic characteristics (psychopathy, sexual deviance, and future risk of sexual violence) in the PO subpopulation. We assessed model specificity in an external cohort of 53 HC individuals.ResultsThe classifier discriminated PO from HC individuals with a balanced accuracy of 75.5% (sensitivity = 64.3%, specificity = 86.7%, P5000 = 0.018) and an out-of-sample specificity to correctly identify HC individuals of 94.3%. The predictive brain pattern contained bilateral fractional anisotropy in the anterior cingulate cortex, diffusivity in the left amygdala, and structural prefrontal cortex-amygdala connectivity in both hemispheres. This brain pattern was associated with the number of previous child victims, the current stance on sexuality, and the professionally assessed risk of future sexual violent reoffending.ConclusionAberrant white matter microstructure in the prefronto-temporo-limbic circuit could be a potential neurobiological correlate for PO individuals at high-risk of reoffending with CSA. Although preliminary and exploratory at this point, our findings highlight the general potential of MRI-based biomarkers and particularly WM microstructure patterns for future CSA risk assessment and preventive efforts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of risk—Using machine learning and structural neuroimaging to identify pedophilic offenders

et al. 2023

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“…Rather, we found a larger number of negative deviations associated with violence in regions within the middle-frontal gyrus, insula, collateral sulcus, and cerebellum (Table 5). These results comprise cortical regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex involved in inhibitory control (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) in schizophrenia patients with a history of violence (Tikàsz et al, 2018) and men with pedophilic disorder (Szczypiński et al, 2022), and the insula known to be involved in empathy, social cognition, and risky decision making (Uddin, Nomi, Hébert-Seropian, Ghaziri, & Boucher, 2017). The cerebellum is important to motor control, cognition, and executive control (D’Angelo, 2018), but has also been linked to aggressive behavior (Leutgeb et al, 2016; Wolfs, Klaus, & Schutter, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual-level deviations from normative brain morphology in violence, psychosis, and psychopathy

Haukvik,

Wolfers,

Tesli

et al. 2023

Preprint

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BackgroundNeuroimaging research has shown brain morphological abnormalities associated with violence and psychosis, but individual differences are substantial and results not consistent across studies. Recently developed normative modeling of brain MRI-features provides a possibility to parse this heterogeneity by mapping inter-individual brain characteristics, which has not yet been explored in forensic psychiatry.MethodsWe explored brain heterogeneity in persons with a history of severe violence with or without a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (HoV, n=58), non-violent patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD-NV, n=138), and healthy non-violent controls (HC) from lifetime normative trajectories of cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volumes. Normative models were based on Freesurfer derived regions of interest from 58,836 individuals (ages 2-100) from 82 sites. Group differences and associations between brain deviations and psychopathy traits (PCL-R scores) were investigated.ResultsAcross groups, we found an overall heterogeneous pattern of individual-level deviations, with a significantly higher frequency of extreme negative deviations in HoV (p=.020,d=.31) and SSD-NV (p=.019,d=.48), than HC. Group differences were mostly present in subcortical volumes and cortical area, but not thickness, with significant regional group-level differences within the subcallosal and insular cortices, and the cerebellum, and no significant associations to psychopathy traits.ConclusionBy applying normative modeling, this proof-of-concept study demonstrates the heterogeneous pattern of brain morphometry deviations associated with violence and psychosis. While the results warrant replication, studies addressing individual brain deviations may contribute to improved understanding of the complex underpinnings of violence in forensic psychiatry.

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Brain activation in response to art-based tasks using diverse materials based on the Expressive Therapy Continuum (ETC)

Han,

Kim,

Kim

2024

The Arts in Psychotherapy

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Abnormal behavioral and neural responses in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during emotional interference for cognitive control in pedophilic sex offenders

Cited by 5 publications

References 25 publications

Patterns of risk—Using machine learning and structural neuroimaging to identify pedophilic offenders

Patterns of risk—Using machine learning and structural neuroimaging to identify pedophilic offenders

Individual-level deviations from normative brain morphology in violence, psychosis, and psychopathy

Brain activation in response to art-based tasks using diverse materials based on the Expressive Therapy Continuum (ETC)

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