Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, United States.
Univeristy of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, United States.
Neuroimage Clin. 2017 Sep 21;16:498-506. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2017.08.024. eCollection 2017.
Atypical amygdala responses to emotional stimuli have been consistently reported in youth with Disruptive Behavior Disorders (DBDs; Conduct Disorder/Oppositional Defiant Disorder). However, responding to animacy stimuli has not been systematically investigated. Yet, the amygdala is known to be responsive to animacy stimuli and impairment in responsiveness to animacy information may have implications for social cognitive development. Twenty-nine youth with DBDs and 20 typically developing youth, matched for IQ, age ( = 14.45, = 2.05) and gender, completed a dot probe task during fMRI. Stimuli consisted of negative/faces, negative/objects, neutral/faces and neutral/objects images. Youth with DBDs, relative to typically developing youth, showed: i) reduced amygdala and lateral temporal cortex responses to faces relative to objects. Moreover, within the group of youth with DBDs, increasing callous-unemotional traits were associated with lesser amygdala responses to faces relative to objects. These data suggest that youth with DBDs, particularly those with high levels of CU traits exhibit dysfunction in animacy processing in the amygdala. This dysfunction may underpin the asociality reported in these youth.
在具有破坏性行为障碍（DBD；品行障碍/对立违抗性障碍）的年轻人中，一致报告了杏仁核对情绪刺激的非典型反应。然而，对生动性刺激的反应尚未系统地研究过。然而，杏仁核对生动性刺激有反应，对生动性信息的反应能力受损可能对社会认知发展有影响。29 名患有 DBD 的年轻人和 20 名智力、年龄（=14.45，=2.05）和性别相匹配的正常发育的年轻人在 fMRI 期间完成了点探测任务。刺激包括负面/面孔、负面/物体、中性/面孔和中性/物体图像。与正常发育的年轻人相比，患有 DBD 的年轻人表现出：i）相对于物体，对面孔的杏仁核和外侧颞叶皮层的反应减少。此外，在 DBD 组的年轻人中，冷酷无情特质的增加与对物体的面孔的杏仁核反应减少有关。这些数据表明，患有 DBD 的年轻人，尤其是那些具有高水平 CU 特质的年轻人，在杏仁核中表现出对生动性处理的功能障碍。这种功能障碍可能是这些年轻人所报告的反社会行为的基础。
