Mood & Anxiety Program, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA; Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA.
Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
Psychiatry Res. 2011 Dec 30;194(3):279-286. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2011.07.008. Epub 2011 Nov 1.
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate dysfunction in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits during a moral judgment task. Fourteen adolescents with psychopathic traits and 14 healthy controls were assessed using fMRI while they categorized illegal and legal behaviors in a moral judgment implicit association task. fMRI data were then analyzed using random-effects analysis of variance and functional connectivity. Youths with psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala activity when making judgments about legal actions and reduced functional connectivity between the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex during task performance. These results suggest that psychopathic traits are associated with amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction. This dysfunction may relate to previous findings of disrupted moral judgment in this population.
我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来研究具有破坏性行为障碍和精神病特质的青少年在进行道德判断任务时杏仁核和眶额皮层的功能障碍。在一项道德判断内隐联想任务中，我们对 14 名具有精神病特质的青少年和 14 名健康对照者进行了 fMRI 评估。然后使用随机效应方差分析和功能连接对 fMRI 数据进行分析。当做出关于合法行为的判断时，具有精神病特质的青少年表现出杏仁核活动减少，并且在任务执行期间杏仁核和眶额皮层之间的功能连接减少。这些结果表明，精神病特质与杏仁核和眶额皮层功能障碍有关。这种功能障碍可能与该人群中发现的道德判断受损有关。
