Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA; Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
Neuroimage Clin. 2019;23:101836. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2019.101836. Epub 2019 Apr 25.
Antisocial behavior (AB), including violence, criminality, and substance abuse, is often linked to deficits in emotion processing, reward-related learning, and inhibitory control, as well as their associated neural networks. To better understand these deficits, the structural connections between brain regions implicated in AB can be examined using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which assesses white matter microstructure. Prior studies have identified differences in white matter microstructure of the uncinate fasciculus (UF), primarily within offender samples. However, few studies have looked beyond the UF or determined whether these relationships are present dimensionally across the range of AB and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. In the current study, we examined associations between AB and white matter microstructure from major fiber tracts, including the UF. Further, we explored whether these associations were specific to individuals high on CU traits. Within a relatively large community sample of young adult men from low-income, urban families (N = 178), we found no direct relations between dimensional, self-report measures of either AB or CU traits and white matter microstructure. However, we found significant associations between AB and white matter microstructure of several tracts only for those with high co-occurring levels of CU traits. In general, these associations did not differ according to race, socioeconomic status, or comorbid psychiatric symptoms. The current results suggest a unique neural profile of severe AB in combination with CU traits, characterized by widespread differences in white matter microstructure, which differs from either AB or CU traits in isolation and is not specific to hypothesized tracts (i.e., the UF).
反社会行为（AB），包括暴力、犯罪和药物滥用，通常与情绪处理、奖励相关学习和抑制控制的缺陷以及它们相关的神经网络有关。为了更好地理解这些缺陷，可以使用评估白质微观结构的扩散张量成像（DTI）来检查与 AB 相关的大脑区域之间的结构连接。先前的研究已经确定了钩束（UF）白质微观结构的差异，主要是在罪犯样本中。然而，很少有研究超出 UF 范围，或者确定这些关系是否在 AB 和冷酷无情（CU）特征的范围内存在。在当前的研究中，我们检查了 AB 与主要纤维束（包括 UF）的白质微观结构之间的关联。此外，我们还探讨了这些关联是否存在于 CU 特征较高的个体中。在一个来自低收入城市家庭的年轻成年男性的相对较大的社区样本中（N=178），我们没有发现维度上的 AB 或 CU 特征的自我报告测量与白质微观结构之间的直接关系。然而，我们发现 AB 与几个束的白质微观结构之间存在显著关联，仅针对具有高共同存在 CU 特征的个体。总的来说，这些关联与种族、社会经济地位或共患精神科症状无关。当前的结果表明，严重 AB 与 CU 特征相结合具有独特的神经特征，其特征是白质微观结构广泛存在差异，这与单独的 AB 或 CU 特征不同，也与假设的束（即 UF）无关。
