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Callous traits in children with and without conduct problems predict reduced connectivity when viewing harm to others.

ABSTRACT: The presence of elevated callous unemotional (CU) traits seems to designate a distinct group of children and adolescents with serious conduct problems. However, the extent to which CU traits impact the aversive reaction to harm is still a contentious issue. Here, we examined the effective connectivity seeded in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex in a large number of children (N?=?123, age 9-11, 60 females) with various levels of conduct disorder (CD) symptoms in response to visual stimuli depicting other people being physically injured. Perceiving others being harmed was associated with increased hemodynamic activity in the left amygdala and right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). Children with higher callous traits showed less functional connectivity seeded in anterior cingulate with left amygdala and anterior insula. Conversely, CD symptoms were positively related to connectivity of insula with rTPJ. Overall, these results suggest that callousness is marked by the disruption of widespread cortical networks responsible for detecting and appropriately responding to important environmental cues, such as the distress of others.

SUBMITTER: Yoder KJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4735714 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Callous traits in children with and without conduct problems predict reduced connectivity when viewing harm to others.

Yoder Keith J KJ Lahey Benjamin B BB Decety Jean J

Scientific reports 20160202

The presence of elevated callous unemotional (CU) traits seems to designate a distinct group of children and adolescents with serious conduct problems. However, the extent to which CU traits impact the aversive reaction to harm is still a contentious issue. Here, we examined the effective connectivity seeded in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex in a large number of children (N = 123, age 9-11, 60 females) with various levels of conduct disorder (CD) symptoms in response to visual ...[more]

PMID: 26832606

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Project description:BackgroundChildren who are frequently aggressive or lack empathy show various deficits in their social information processing. Several findings suggest that children with conduct problems (CP) show a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as hostile (hostile attribution bias) and have difficulties to disengage from negative stimuli (attentional bias). The role that additional callous-unemotional traits (CU-traits) play in these biases is yet unclear. Investigating both attentional and attributional aspects of social information processing in children can help us to understand where anomalies in the processing pathway occur and whether the biases are associated with CP and CU-traits separately or in an interactive manner.MethodsWe compared three groups of children: (a) 25 children with CP and low levels of CU-traits (b) 25 children with CP and elevated levels of CU-traits (c) 50 gender (68% male), age (8-17 years) and intelligence score-matched typically developing children, on a pictorial emotional stroop task and a hostile attribution bias task.ResultsIn contrast to our predictions, there were no significant group differences regarding attentional biases or hostile attribution biases. Boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits showed a significantly higher hostile attribution bias compared to girls with CP and high levels of CU-traits. The attention bias to angry stimuli significantly correlated with the hostile attribution bias. Compared to the control group the CP group with low levels of CU-traits showed a significantly stronger association between the attention bias to angry stimuli and the hostile attribution bias.ConclusionsThe current study provides evidence that boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits interpret ambiguous situations as more hostile than girls do. Our results further provide indications that the interaction of attentional and attributional biases in children with CP might contribute to their increased aggressive behavior.

Project description:The ability to empathise relies in part on using one's own affective experience to simulate the affective experience of others. This process is supported by a number of brain areas including the anterior insula (AI), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and the amygdala. Children with conduct problems (CP), and in particular those with high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/HCU) present with less empathy than their peers. They also show reduced neural response in areas supporting empathic processing when viewing other people in distress. The current study focused on identifying brain areas co-activated during affective introspection of: i) One's own emotions ('Own emotion'); ii) Others' emotions ('Other emotion'); and iii) One's feelings about others' emotions ('Feel for other') during fearful vs neutral scenarios in typically developing boys (TD; n = 31), boys with CP/HCU (n = 31), and boys with CP and low levels of CU (CP/LCU; n = 33). The conjunction analysis across conditions within the TD group revealed significant clusters of activation in the AI, ACC/mPFC, and occipital cortex. Conjunction analyses across conditions in the CP/HCU and CP/LCU groups did not identify these areas as significantly activated. However, follow-up analyses were not able to confirm statistically significant differences between groups across the whole network, and Bayes-factor analyses did not provide substantial support for either the null or alternate hypotheses. Post-hoc comparisons indicated that the lack of conjunction effects in the CP/HCU group may reflect reduced affective introspection in the 'Other emotion' and 'Feel for other' conditions, and by reduced affective introspection in the 'Own emotion' condition in the CP/LCU group. These findings provide limited and ultimately equivocal evidence for altered affective introspection regarding others in CP/HCU, and altered affective introspection for own emotions in CP/LCU, and highlight the need for further research to systematically investigate the precise nature of empathy deficits in children with CP.

Dataset Information

Callous traits in children with and without conduct problems predict reduced connectivity when viewing harm to others.

Publications

Callous traits in children with and without conduct problems predict reduced connectivity when viewing harm to others.

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