Psychopathic traits influence amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity during facial emotion processing.

Michael P Ewbank,Luca Passamonti,Andrew J Calder,Graeme Fairchild,Ian M Goodyer,Cindy C Hagan

doi:10.1093/scan/nsy019

Abstract

There is accumulating evidence that youths with antisocial behavior or psychopathic traits show deficits in facial emotion recognition, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these impairments. A number of neuroimaging studies have investigated brain activity during facial emotion processing in youths with Conduct Disorder (CD) and adults with psychopathy, but few of these studies tested for group differences in effective connectivity—i.e. changes in connectivity during emotion processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and psycho-physiological interaction methods, we investigated the impact of CD and psychopathic traits on amygdala activity and effective connectivity in 46 male youths with CD and 25 typically-developing controls when processing emotional faces. All participants were aged 16–21 years. Relative to controls, youths with CD showed reduced amygdala activity when processing angry or sad faces relative to neutral faces, but the groups did not significantly differ in amygdala-related effective connectivity. In contrast, psychopathic traits were negatively correlated with amygdala–ventral anterior cingulate cortex connectivity for angry vs neutral faces, but were unrelated to amygdala responses to angry or sad faces. These findings suggest that CD and psychopathic traits have differential effects on amygdala activation and functional interactions between limbic regions during facial emotion processing.

Highlights

There are a large number of studies showing impairments in facial emotion recognition in antisocial populations, with studies of children, adolescents and adults all providing evidence that antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits are associated with emotion recognition difficulties (Dolan and Fullam, 2006; Marsh and Blair, 2008; Fairchild et al, 2009; Fairchild et al, 2010; Dawel et al, 2012)
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and psycho-physiological interaction methods, we investigated the impact of Conduct Disorder (CD) and psychopathic traits on amygdala activity and effective connectivity in 46 male youths with CD and 25 typically-developing controls when processing emotional faces
The groups were matched in age, Intelligence Quotient (IQ), and ethnicity, but differed in socioeconomic status, with CO–CD participants being more likely to come from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds than controls (P 1⁄4 0.02)

Summary

Introduction

There are a large number of studies showing impairments in facial emotion recognition in antisocial populations, with studies of children, adolescents and adults all providing evidence that antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits are associated with emotion recognition difficulties (Dolan and Fullam, 2006; Marsh and Blair, 2008; Fairchild et al, 2009; Fairchild et al, 2010; Dawel et al, 2012). Despite the consistency of these findings and their potential clinical significance, relatively little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these deficits.

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