The neurobiology of psychopathic traits in youths

Abstract

Conduct disorder is a childhood behaviour disorder that is characterized by persistent aggressive or antisocial behaviour that disrupts the child’s environment and impairs his or her functioning. A proportion of children with conduct disorder have psychopathic traits. Psychopathic traits consist of a callous–unemotional component and an impulsive–antisocial component, which are associated with two core impairments. The first is a reduced empathic response to the distress of other individuals, which primarily reflects reduced amygdala responsiveness to distress cues; the second is deficits in decision making and in reinforcement learning, which reflects dysfunction in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and striatum. Genetic and prenatal factors contribute to the abnormal development of these neural systems, and social–environmental variables that affect motivation influence the probability that antisocial behaviour will be subsequently displayed.

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

“…In line with frontolimbic dysfunction models of psychopathy [Anderson and Kiehl, 2012; Blair, 2013a, 2013b], affective psychopathic traits related to diminished CMA connectivity with dorsal and ventral portions of the anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortices, extending to the brainstem periaqueductal gray and cerebellum region. While these regions clearly serve myriad of functions, the interconnections and temporal dynamics they share are increasingly surmised reflective of an integrated neural circuitry serving salience processing, affective responding, and associative learning [Bressler and Menon, 2010; Etkin et al, 2011; Habas et al, 2009; Menon, 2011; Pessoa, 2011; Seeley et al, 2007].…”

“…Interpersonal psychopathic traits related to increased connectivity of BLA and CMA with a corticostriatal network formation potentially relevant to psychopathy [Anderson and Kiehl, 2012; Blair, 2015; Blair, 2013a; Glenn and Yang, 2012], which extended from the orbitofrontal and anterior insular cortices to the nucleus accumbens, caudate, and putamen. These regions are highly interconnected with BLA and CMA subregions, forming an amygdalo‐cortico‐striatal circuit dedicated, among other things, to various aspects of reward processing [Haber, 2011; Haber and Knutson, 2010; Naqvi and Bechara, 2009].…”

“…Recent system‐level theories suggest amygdala‐centered network dysfunction in the etiology of psychopathic traits among antisocial people [Anderson and Kiehl, 2012; Blair, 2015; Blair, 2013a]. Within these theories, the amygdala is generally hyporesponsive to negative affective stimuli and lacks optimal functional interactions with paralimbic neurocircuits, leading to deficient affective reactivity (particularly to fear), biased attention modulation, and poor associative learning [Anderson and Kiehl, 2012; Blair, 2013a; Blair, 2015].…”

“…Within these theories, the amygdala is generally hyporesponsive to negative affective stimuli and lacks optimal functional interactions with paralimbic neurocircuits, leading to deficient affective reactivity (particularly to fear), biased attention modulation, and poor associative learning [Anderson and Kiehl, 2012; Blair, 2013a; Blair, 2015]. Very few studies, though, have actually investigated amygdala functional networks in relation to psychopathy, yielding conflicting results of both enhanced and diminished network integrity [Aghajani et al, 2016; Contreras‐Rodriguez et al, 2015; Decety et al, 2013a; Finger et al, 2012; Marsh et al, 2011; Motzkin et al, 2011; Yoder et al, 2015].…”

“…Most of these studies additionally examined psychopathy as a categorical or unidimensional construct, overlooking its behaviorally and neuronally separable trait assemblies [Carre et al, 2013; Cohn et al, 2014, 2015; Philippi et al, 2015; Sadeh and Verona, 2008; Seara‐Cardoso and Viding, 2014]. For instance, while affective and interpersonal traits of psychopathy relate to blunted affective reactivity within emotion processing neurocircuitries (e.g., insula, amygdala, striatum), the opposite seems to account for behavioral psychopathic tendencies [Blair, 2013a; Buckholtz et al, 2010; Carre et al, 2013; Cohn et al, 2014, 2015b2014; Seara‐Cardoso and Viding, 2014]. Moreover, though amygdala subregional defects are suggested in psychopathy [Moul et al, 2012], the functionality and connectivity of different amygdala subnuclei is typically disregarded in neurocircuit‐level analyses of psychopathic personality.…”