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Título:
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Functional Connectivity Bias in the Prefrontal Cortex of Psychopaths
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Autor/a:
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Contreras-Rodríguez, Oren; Pujol Salud, Jesús; Batalla, Iolanda; Harrison, Ben J.; Soriano-Mas, Carles; Deus Yela, Juan; López-Solà, Marina; Macià, Dídac; Pera Guardiola, Vanessa; Hernández-Ribas, Rosa; Pifarré Paredero, Josep; Menchón, José M.; Cardoner, N. (Narcís)
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Notas:
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BACKGROUND: Psychopathy is characterized by a distinctive interpersonal style that combines callousunemotional
traits with inflexible and antisocial behavior. Traditional emotion-based perspectives link emotional
impairment mostly to alterations in amygdala-ventromedial frontal circuits. However, these models alone cannot
explain why individuals with psychopathy can regularly benefit from emotional information when placed on their
focus of attention and why they are more resistant to interference from nonaffective contextual cues. The present
study aimed to identify abnormal or distinctive functional links between and within emotional and cognitive brain
systems in the psychopathic brain to characterize further the neural bases of psychopathy.
METHODS: High-resolution anatomic magnetic resonance imaging with a functional sequence acquired in the
resting state was used to assess 22 subjects with psychopathy and 22 control subjects. Anatomic and functional
connectivity alterations were investigated first using a whole-brain analysis. Brain regions showing overlapping
anatomic and functional changes were examined further using seed-based functional connectivity mapping.
RESULTS: Subjects with psychopathy showed gray matter reduction involving prefrontal cortex, paralimbic, and
limbic structures. Anatomic changes overlapped with areas showing increased degree of functional connectivity at
the medial-dorsal frontal cortex. Subsequent functional seed-based connectivity mapping revealed a pattern of
reduced functional connectivity of prefrontal areas with limbic-paralimbic structures and enhanced connectivity
within the dorsal frontal lobe in subjects with psychopathy.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that a weakened link between emotional and cognitive domains in the
psychopathic brain may combine with enhanced functional connections within frontal executive areas. The identified
functional alterations are discussed in the context of potential contributors to the inflexible behavior displayed by
individuals with psychopathy.
This work was supported by the Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias de la Seguridad Social of Spain Grant Nos. PI050884 and PI050884, the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain Grant No. SAF2010-19434, the Departament de Justícia de la Generalitat de Catalunya, a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Clinical Career Development Award (I.D. 628509; BJH), a “Miguel Servet” contract from the Carlos III Health Institute (CP10/00604; CS-M), and the Beatriu de Pinós-A postdoctoral fellowship (2010_BP_A_00136) of the Government of Catalunya (ML-S). JD and ML-S are part of the Research Group SGR1450 of the Catalonia Government. |
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Materia(s):
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-Amygdala
-Dorsal executive network
-Flexible self-regulation |
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Derechos:
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(c) Elsevier, 2015
info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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Tipo de documento:
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article
publishedVersion |
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Editor:
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Elsevier
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Compartir:
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