Dissociable relations between amygdala subregional networks and psychopathy trait dimensions in conduct‐disordered juvenile offenders

Abstract

Psychopathy is a serious psychiatric phenomenon characterized by a pathological constellation of affective (e.g., callous, unemotional), interpersonal (e.g., manipulative, egocentric), and behavioral (e.g., impulsive, irresponsible) personality traits. Though amygdala subregional defects are suggested in psychopathy, the functionality and connectivity of different amygdala subnuclei is typically disregarded in neurocircuit‐level analyses of psychopathic personality. Hence, little is known of how amygdala subregional networks may contribute to psychopathy and its underlying trait assemblies in severely antisocial people. We addressed this important issue by uniquely examining the intrinsic functional connectivity of basolateral (BLA) and centromedial (CMA) amygdala networks in relation to affective, interpersonal, and behavioral traits of psychopathy, in conduct‐disordered juveniles with a history of serious delinquency (N = 50, mean age = 16.83 ± 1.32). As predicted, amygdalar connectivity profiles exhibited dissociable relations with different traits of psychopathy. Interpersonal psychopathic traits not only related to increased connectivity of BLA and CMA with a corticostriatal network formation accommodating reward processing, but also predicted stronger CMA connectivity with a network of cortical midline structures supporting sociocognitive processes. In contrast, affective psychopathic traits related to diminished CMA connectivity with a frontolimbic network serving salience processing and affective responding. Finally, behavioral psychopathic traits related to heightened BLA connectivity with a frontoparietal cluster implicated in regulatory executive functioning. We suggest that these trait‐specific shifts in amygdalar connectivity could be particularly relevant to the psychopathic phenotype, as they may fuel a self‐centered, emotionally cold, and behaviorally disinhibited profile. Hum Brain Mapp 37:4017–4033, 2016. © 2016 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Research Review: What do we know about psychopathic traits in children?

“…For instance, Aghajani et al. () found few deficits in the white matter tracts of those with elevated GM traits, but clear deficits in those with elevated CU and DI traits. Cohn and colleagues (Cohn, Pape, et al., 2015) showed that GM traits were unassociated with altered connectivity patterns, whereas CU traits were associated with aberrant connectivity on the default mode network and DI traits were associated with altered connectivity patterns in the frontoparietal cognitive control networks.…”

Qoala-T: A supervised-learning tool for quality control of automatic segmented MRI data

“…We used 784 T1-weighted scans acquired in three different waves from the BrainTime dataset, which is a large accelerated longitudinal research project of 6 normative development (Achterberg et al, 2016;Braams et al, 2015;Peters & Crone, 2017;Peters et al, 2016). For model evaluation, we also used 112 T1-weighted scans from an independent cross-sectional dataset that includes data from typically developing adolescents, adolescents with conduct disorder, and with autism spectrum disorder (BESD; Aghajani et al, 2016;Aghajani et al, 2017;Klapwijk et al, 2016a;Klapwijk et al, 2017;Klapwijk et al, 2016b), and 773 T1-weighted scans from 13 developmental sites from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange dataset (ABIDE; http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/abide/; Di Martino et al, 2014).…”

Aggression Subtypes Relate to Distinct Resting State Functional Connectivity in Disruptive Children and Adolescents

“…Recent studies of resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) in adolescents with CD have mainly reported reduced resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) or activity. Affected brain regions include the amygdala and insula as parts of the salience network (SN) (Aghajani et al, 2016(Aghajani et al, , 2017Zhou, Yao, Fairchild, Zhang, & Wang, 2015), and areas of the default mode network (DMN) (Broulidakis et al, 2016;Lu, Zhou, Wang, Xiang, & Yuan, 2017;Lu, Zhou, Zhang, Wang, & Yuan, 2017;Lu et al, 2015;Zhou et al, 2016). Connectivity between the core DMN regions anterior medial prefrontal cortex (amPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) was reduced in male adolescents with CD compared to healthy controls after controlling for ADHD symptoms, as ADHD symptoms correlated positively with DMN rsFC (Broulidakis et al, 2016).…”