Morphometric Brain Abnormalities in Boys With Conduct Disorder

Comparison of brain volume abnormalities between ADHD and conduct disorder in adolescence

“…46 On the other hand, most attempts to use covariance or post hoc analyses to tease apart diagnostic specificity actually linked putative conduct disorder or ADHD volume deficits to symptom severity for the other disorder. 12,14,18 This has reduced, not improved, clarity. Only a direct comparison of well-characterized noncomorbid samples can effectively determine whether there are uniquely affected brain regions or shared volume abnormalities in each disorder.…”

“…11 Perhaps unsurprisingly, every published brain structure study of youth with conduct disorder examined samples who either entirely or mostly had comorbid ADHD. [12][13][14][15][16] Conversely, careful review of published ADHD brain structure reports reveals that nearly half of these studies (12 of 26; 46%) extensively sampled youth with comorbid antisocial or oppos itional diagnoses, [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] and another 5 studies (19%) did not report on antisociality. [28][29][30][31][32] The remaining 9 (35%) studies [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] with confirmed "pure" (i.e., no comorbidities) ADHD samples typically reported reduced volume only in the small handful of brain regions (i.e., total grey volume, caudate, somatosensory/ premotor cortices, cerebellum) identified by meta-analysis.…”

Multimodal imaging of the self-regulating developing brain

“…Although development of self-regulation in children is the result of a dynamic interaction between maturation and learning, we have scarce knowledge about the role played by structural brain characteristics in this process. Recent reports indicate that adjustment problems in childhood psychopathology are related to structural brain characteristics (9)(10)(11)(12)(13), but the brain basis for development of self-regulation in normal children is less well-understood. Thus, the purpose of the present paper was to use multimodal neuroimaging to map the structural brain characteristics related to self-regulation and cognitive control in a large sample of 735 children between 4 and 21 y of age.…”

“…Strikingly, in addition to their presumed critical role in the development of cognitive control in normal children (28), structural differences in prefrontal and cingulate cortices have repeatedly been identified in children with a range of different psychopathological conditions related to self-regulation and attention, including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, conduct disorder, and prenatal substance exposure (10)(11)(12)(13)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34). Thus, at the neuroanatomical level, there seems to be a link between brain areas involved in cognitive control and inhibition tasks and brain areas associated with regulatory problems in different neurodevelopmental conditions.…”

Potential biomarkers in personality disorders: current state and future research

“…For example, event-related potentials, electroencephalography, autonomic stress reactivity (startle reflex modulation, Skin conductance reactivity, electromyography, heart rate, and pupillary reflex (Lobbestael, Arntz, Cima, & Chakhssi, 2009;Meijer, Smulders, Johnston, & Merckelbach, 2007), response, brain abnormalities (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), (Boccardi et al, 2011;Hecht, 2010;Huebner et al, 2008) Neuropsychological biomarkers:…”