Regional cortical thinning in subjects with violent antisocial personality disorder or schizophrenia - PubMed (original) (raw)

Comparative Study

Regional cortical thinning in subjects with violent antisocial personality disorder or schizophrenia

Veena M Narayan et al. Am J Psychiatry. 2007 Sep.

Abstract

Violent behavior is associated with antisocial personality disorder and to a lesser extent with schizophrenia. Neuroimaging studies have suggested that several biological systems are disturbed in schizophrenia, and structural changes in frontal and temporal lobe regions are reported in both antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia. The neural substrates that underlie violent behavior specifically and their structural analogs, however, remain poorly understood. Nor is it known whether a common biological basis exists for aggressive, impulsive, and violent behavior across these clinical populations. To explore the correlates of violence with brain structure in antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia, the authors used magnetic resonance imaging data to investigate for the first time, to the authors' knowledge, regional differences in cortical thickness in violent and nonviolent individuals with schizophrenia and/or antisocial personality disorder and in healthy comparison subjects. Subject groups included right-handed men closely matched for demographic variables (total number of subjects=56). Violence was associated with cortical thinning in the medial inferior frontal and lateral sensory motor cortex, particularly in the right hemisphere, and surrounding association areas (Brodmann's areas 10, 11, 12, and 32). Only violent subjects with antisocial personality disorder exhibited cortical thinning in inferior mesial frontal cortices. The biological underpinnings of violent behavior may therefore vary between these two violent subject groups in which the medial frontal cortex is compromised in antisocial personality disorder exclusively, but laminar abnormalities in sensorimotor cortices may relate to violent behavior in both antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors report no competing interests.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Uncorrected Statistical Mapping Results of Cortical Thickness Effects Between Groups Defined by Schizophrenia and Violence, Interaction and Simple Effectsa

a The color bar encodes the p value associated with comparisons using the general linear model performed at each cortical surface point. The first row indicates the cortical thickness changes of violent subjects with antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia subjects compared to nonviolent schizophrenia and healthy comparison subjects. Hot colors indicate regions in which violent subjects have significantly thinner cortices than nonviolent subjects; light blue and light purple indicate regions in which violent subjects have thicker cortices than nonviolent subjects. The second row indicates cortical thickness differences in schizophrenia patients. This contrast compares violent and nonviolent schizophrenia patients with subjects with antisocial personality disorder and healthy comparison subjects; pink and red indicate regions in which schizophrenia patients have significantly thinner cortices than nonschizophrenia patients. The third row indicates the regional interaction effects between groups collapsed according to a diagnosis of schizophrenia and violent behavior. To explore this interaction, simple effects comparing antisocial personality disorder and healthy comparison subjects are shown in the fourth row. Pink and red indicate regions in which subjects with antisocial personality disorder have significantly thinner cortices in relation to comparison subjects. In the last row, simple effects between violent schizophrenia and nonviolent schizophrenia are mapped. Pink and red indicate regions in which violent schizophrenia patients have significantly thinner corticies than nonviolent schizophrenia patients.

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Regional cortical thinning in subjects with violent antisocial personality disorder or schizophrenia - PubMed (original) (raw)