Reduced cortical thickness and increased surface area in antisocial personality disorder

Abstract

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), one of whose characteristics is high impulsivity, is of great interest in the field of brain structure and function. However, little is known about possible impairments in the cortical anatomy in ASPD, in terms of cortical thickness and surface area, as well as their possible relationship with impulsivity. In this neuroimaging study, we first investigated the changes of cortical thickness and surface area in ASPD patients, in comparison to those of healthy controls, and then performed correlation analyses between these measures and the ability of impulse control. We found that ASPD patients showed thinner cortex while larger surface area in several specific brain regions, i.e., bilateral superior frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal and triangularis, insula cortex, precuneus, middle frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and left bank of superior temporal sulcus. In addition, we also found that the ability of impulse control was positively correlated with cortical thickness in the superior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, pars triangularis, superior temporal gyrus, and insula cortex. To our knowledge, this study is the first to reveal simultaneous changes in cortical thickness and surface area in ASPD, as well as their relationship with impulsivity. These cortical structural changes may introduce uncontrolled and callous behavioral characteristic in ASPD patients, and these potential biomarkers may be very helpful in understanding the pathomechanism of ASPD.

A Systematic Literature Review of Neuroimaging of Psychopathic Traits

“…In a study by Kolla et al (110), psychopathic and ASPD groups were compared to each other, and psychopathic individuals had a more pronounced decrease in GMV in temporal and cerebellar regions. Further, contrary to findings in psychopathy, several of the regions with gray matter reductions were accompanied by increased surface area, most notably in the superior temporal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus, supramarginal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, insula, and parahippocampal gyrus (125). Furthermore, ASPD subjects had lower right thalamic volume compared to healthy controls (129).…”

“…Similar to psychopathy, ASPD was associated with gray matter aberrancies in the limbic and cortical areas. Decreased GMV was noted in anterior cingulate cortex (125-127) superior temporal sulcus, superior temporal gyrus, frontal gyri (125), orbitofrontal cortex (125,127,128), sensory motor area, frontopolar cortex (127), medial prefrontal cortex (127,128), and rectal gyrus (128). In a study by Kolla et al (110), psychopathic and ASPD groups were compared to each other, and psychopathic individuals had a more pronounced decrease in GMV in temporal and cerebellar regions.…”

Sensorimotor and pain‐related alterations of the gray matter and white matter in Type 2 diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy

“…Because each index measures a unique aspect of cortical morphology, analyzing them separately might help uncover the neural mechanisms involved in the development of DPN. According to the radial unit hypothesis, cortical thickness is mediated by the horizontal layers in cortical columns, whereas cortical surface area is primarily determined by the number of cortical columns perpendicular to the cortical surface (Ecker et al, ; Jiang et al, ; Rakic, ). Thus, the alterations in cortical thickness and cortical surface area that we observed might respectively be driven by cellular events perpendicular (such as demyelination and accelerated cell death) and tangential (including gliogenesis, synaptogenesis, and intracortical myelination) to the cortical surface (Hill et al, ; Hogstrom et al, ; Jubault et al, ; Toth et al, ; Van Essen, ).…”

The contribution of brain imaging to the understanding of psychopathy

“…Earlier imaging studies predicted gray matter reductions in the prefrontal lobe of psychopaths (Raine et al ., 2000; Yang et al ., 2005 a , 2005 b ). Subsequent research has both largely confirmed such a prediction and demonstrated that tissue alteration extends to other brain locations (Laakso et al ., 2001, 2002; Narayan et al ., 2007; de Oliveira-Souza et al ., 2008; Müller et al ., 2008; Tiihonen et al ., 2008; Yang et al ., 2009 a , 2009 b , 2010; Boccardi et al ., 2011, 2013; Raine et al ., 2011; Sato et al ., 2011; Ermer et al ., 2012; Gregory et al ., 2012; Ly et al ., 2012; Bertsch et al ., 2013; Kolla et al ., 2014; Kumari et al ., 2014; Contreras-Rodríguez et al ., 2015; Walters et al ., 2015; Jiang et al ., 2016), as summarized in Table 1. Although the number of reported brain areas indicates a tendency for changes to affect the cortex globally, gray matter volume reduction is particularly consistent across studies in (i) the rostral temporal lobe and the rostral and ventral frontal lobe including the ventral-medial and orbitofrontal cortex; (ii) the dorsal aspect of the brain medial wall involving a dorsal/medial frontal area extending to the anterior cingulate cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus; (iii) the posterior parahippocampal gyri/medial visual cortex; and (iv) the sensorimotor cortex.…”