Anderson Nathaniel E, Maurer J Michael, Nyalakanti Prashanth, Harenski Keith A, Harenski Carla L, Koenigs Michael R, Decety Jean, Kiehl Kent A
The Mind Research Network & Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute,Albuquerque, NM,USA.
University of Wisconsin-Madison,Madison, WI,USA.
Psychol Med. 2019 Jun;49(8):1401-1408. doi: 10.1017/S0033291718002921. Epub 2018 Oct 12.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with severe emotional and interpersonal consequences and persistent antisocial behavior. Neurobiological models of psychopathy emphasize impairments in emotional processing, attention, and integration of information across large-scale neural networks in the brain. One of the largest integrative hubs in the brain is the corpus callosum (CC) - a large white matter structure that connects the two cerebral hemispheres.
The current study examines CC volume, measured via Freesurfer parcellation, in a large sample (n = 495) of incarcerated men who were assessed for psychopathic traits using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R).
Psychopathy was associated with reduced volume across all five sub-regions of the CC. These relationships were primarily driven by the affective/interpersonal elements of psychopathy (PCL-R Factor 1), as no significant associations were found between the CC and the lifestyle/antisocial traits of psychopathy. The observed effects were not attributable to differences in substance use severity, age, IQ, or total brain volume.
These findings align with suggestions that core psychopathic traits may be fostered by reduced integrative capacity across large-scale networks in the brain.
精神病态是一种人格障碍，与严重的情感和人际后果以及持续的反社会行为相关。精神病态的神经生物学模型强调大脑中情感处理、注意力以及跨大规模神经网络的信息整合存在缺陷。大脑中最大的整合枢纽之一是胼胝体（CC）——连接两个大脑半球的一个大的白质结构。
本研究通过FreeSurfer分割法测量了一大群被监禁男性（n = 495）的CC体积，这些男性使用《哈雷精神病态检查表修订版》（PCL - R）对精神病态特征进行了评估。
精神病态与CC所有五个子区域的体积减小有关。这些关系主要由精神病态的情感/人际因素（PCL - R因子1）驱动，因为在CC与精神病态的生活方式/反社会特征之间未发现显著关联。观察到的效应并非归因于物质使用严重程度、年龄、智商或全脑体积的差异。
这些发现与以下观点一致，即大脑中跨大规模网络整合能力的降低可能助长了核心精神病态特征。
