Dataset Information

Imaging decision about whether to benefit self by harming others: Adolescents with conduct and substance problems, with or without callous-unemotionality, or developing typically.

ABSTRACT: We sought to identify brain activation differences in conduct-problem youth with limited prosocial emotions (LPE) compared to conduct-problem youth without LPE and community adolescents, and to test associations between brain activation and severity of callous-unemotional traits. We utilized a novel task, which asks subjects to repeatedly decide whether to accept offers where they will benefit but a beneficent other will be harmed. Behavior on this task has been previously associated with levels of prosocial emotions and severity of callous-unemotional traits, and is related to empathic concern. During fMRI acquisition, 66 male adolescents (21 conduct-problem patients with LPE, 21 without, and 24 typically-developing controls) played this novel game. Within typically-developing controls, we identified a network engaged during decision involving bilateral insula, and inferior parietal and medial frontal cortices, among other regions. Group comparisons using non-parametric (distribution-free) permutation tests demonstrated LPE patients had lower activation estimates than typically-developing adolescents in right anterior insula. Additional significant group differences emerged with our a priori parametric cluster-wise inference threshold. These results suggest measurable functional brain activation differences in conduct-problem adolescents with LPE compared to typically-developing adolescents. Such differences may underscore differential treatment needs for conduct-problem males with and without LPE.

SUBMITTER: Sakai JT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5705947 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Imaging decision about whether to benefit self by harming others: Adolescents with conduct and substance problems, with or without callous-unemotionality, or developing typically.

Sakai Joseph T JT Dalwani Manish S MS Mikulich-Gilbertson Susan K SK Raymond Kristen K McWilliams Shannon S Tanabe Jody J Rojas Don D Regner Michael M Banich Marie T MT Crowley Thomas J TJ

Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging 20170311

We sought to identify brain activation differences in conduct-problem youth with limited prosocial emotions (LPE) compared to conduct-problem youth without LPE and community adolescents, and to test associations between brain activation and severity of callous-unemotional traits. We utilized a novel task, which asks subjects to repeatedly decide whether to accept offers where they will benefit but a beneficent other will be harmed. Behavior on this task has been previously associated with levels ...[more]

PMID: 28371655

Similar Datasets

Project description:Background:Children 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. Methods:We 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. Results:In 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. Conclusions:The 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

Imaging decision about whether to benefit self by harming others: Adolescents with conduct and substance problems, with or without callous-unemotionality, or developing typically.

Publications

Imaging decision about whether to benefit self by harming others: Adolescents with conduct and substance problems, with or without callous-unemotionality, or developing typically.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets