Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2020 Nov 6;15(9):1004-1016. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa134.
Despite aggression being detrimental to children's physical health, mental health and social development, the dispositional and neurological antecedents of aggression in the child are poorly understood. Here we examined the relationship between trait aggression as measured by Buss and Warren's Aggression Questionnaire and personality traits measured with Big Five Questionnaire for Children in 77 primary-school children and recorded resting-state brain activity (fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations [fALFF]) and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The present results showed that trait aggression was negatively correlated with agreeableness and positively correlated with neuroticism. The brain analyses showed that children with a higher propensity for aggression had a lower fALFF mainly in the left superior temporal gyrus, right parahippocampal gyrus and left supramarginal gyrus. Physical and total aggressions were negatively associated with rsFC between the right parahippocampal gyrus and the right putamen. Further analysis revealed that this rsFC could moderate the influence of neuroticism on total aggression. Moreover, the results suggest the presence of a sex difference in the neurodevelopmental mechanisms underlying aggression in middle childhood. Overall, our findings indicate that aggressive children have lower agreeableness and higher neuroticism, and the underlying neural systems are mainly implicated in social judgment and empathy.
尽管攻击行为对儿童的身心健康和社会发展有害，但儿童攻击行为的性格和神经前因仍知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了 77 名小学生用 Buss 和 Warren 的攻击性问卷测量的特质攻击性与用儿童大五人格问卷测量的人格特质之间的关系，并使用功能磁共振成像记录静息态脑活动（低频振幅分数 [fALFF]）和静息态功能连接（rsFC）。本研究结果表明，特质攻击性与宜人性呈负相关，与神经质呈正相关。脑分析表明，具有更高攻击性倾向的儿童左颞上回、右海马旁回和左缘上回的 fALFF 较低。身体攻击和总攻击与右海马旁回和右壳核之间的 rsFC 呈负相关。进一步的分析表明，这种 rsFC 可以调节神经质对总攻击的影响。此外，结果表明，在儿童中期攻击性的神经发育机制中存在性别差异。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，攻击性儿童的宜人性较低，神经质较高，潜在的神经系统主要涉及社会判断和同理心。
