Psychophysiological correlates of aggression and violence: an integrative review

Abstract

This paper reviews existing psychophysiological studies of aggression and violent behaviour including research employing autonomic, electrocortical and neuroimaging measures. Robust physiological correlates of persistent aggressive behaviour evident in this literature include low baseline heart rate, enhanced autonomic reactivity to stressful or aversive stimuli, enhanced EEG slow wave activity, reduced P300 brain potential response and indications from structural and functional neuroimaging studies of dysfunction in frontocortical and limbic brain regions that mediate emotional processing and regulation. The findings are interpreted within a conceptual framework that draws on two integrative models in the literature. The first is a recently developed hierarchical model of impulse control (externalizing) problems, in which various disinhibitory syndromes including aggressive and addictive behaviours of different kinds are seen as arising from common as well as distinctive aetiologic factors. This model represents an approach to organizing these various interrelated phenotypes and investigating their common and distinctive aetiologic substrates. The other is a neurobiological model that posits impairments in affective regulatory circuits in the brain as a key mechanism for impulsive aggressive behaviour. This model provides a perspective for integrating findings from studies employing different measures that have implicated varying brain structures and physiological systems in violent and aggressive behaviour.

Externalizing proneness and brain response during pre-cuing and viewing of emotional pictures

“…Notably, high-disinhibited subjects did not differ in responses to noise blasts that occurred without warning, indicating that impaired preparatory processing was the basis for reactivity differences. Findings from these studies appear consistent with clinical descriptions of high-disinhibited-externalizing individuals as hostile in their perceptions of others, deficient in anticipatory coping, low in frustration tolerance, and prone to react aggressively to threats (Dodge et al, 1995;Davidson et al, 2000;Frick and Marsee, 2006;Patrick, 2008).…”

“…For example, Viding et al (2012) reported augmented amygdala reactivity to fearful face stimuli relative to neutral faces in young males with conduct problems but lacking core psychopathic symptoms, corresponding to high disinhibited (externalizing-prone) individuals (Patrick, 2008). The perspective here is that heightened reactivity of this system is associated with difficulties in processing of emotional cues in dynamic situational contexts, leading to affective dysregulation expressed as distress, anger and reactive aggression (Blair, 2013;Blair et al, 2014).…”

Time course of facial emotion processing in women with borderline personality disorder: an ERP study

“…This component is thought to reflect higher stages of emotional face processing, including emotional categorization, working memory updating and cognitive closure processes that are highly sensitive to psychological influences. For instance, reduced P300 amplitudes in impulse control tasks have been reported in individuals with BPD [41][42][43] and impulse control disorders or reactive aggression (for a review, see Patrick 69 ) and have been interpreted as a correlate of the externalizing factor that these disorders have in common. 69 Although the results of these tasks are difficult to compare with the present facial processing results, the general reductions in P300 amplitudes may partly reflect enhanced externalizing behaviour of patients with BPD.…”

Development of a social emotional information processing assessment for adults (SEIP‐Q)

“…We refer to this updated model as a social-emotional information processing (SIEP) model. This addition reflects what we know about the role of negative affect in aggressive behavior (Berkowitz, 1990;Verona, Patrick, & Lang, 2002) as well as evidence that aggressive individuals have more trait anger (McCloskey et al, 2006), emotional lability (Fettich, McCloskey, Look, & Coccaro, 2015), and greater physiological reactivity (Patrick, 2008).…”