A small group of men engage in a life-course-persistent pattern of antisocial behaviour. They are disproportionally responsible for violent crime, resulting in considerable societal costs. They meet diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder (CD) in youth and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) disorder with (ASPD+P) and without psychopathy (+/-P) in adulthood. Effective treatments for these conditions remain sparse, and understanding of mechanisms is limited.
Evidence from neuroimaging studies has provided important first steps towards a mechanistic understanding, however the likely neurodevelopmental nature of the conditions, and particularly, the contribution of neurochemistry, cerebral blood flow and computational models of neuropsychological deficits remain understudied. In this symposium, we present work addressing these deficits. First, we present work from a neuroimaging study in ASPD+/-P, investigating the effect of intranasal oxytocin on neural processing of fear, and on cerebral blood flow, and investigating differences in striatal Glutamate:GABA regulation. Secondly, we present work using computational modelling on data from a large-scale multicentre project in CD (ENIGMA) to investigate learning from reward and punishment in youths with CD.
Together, these studies provide novel insights into the neurobiology of these complex disorders and bridge the gap towards psychopharmacological interventions based on a mechanistic understanding.
This session will give you:
An overview of our current understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of disorders of antisocial behaviour (Conduct Disorder and ASPD+/-psychopathy.
Insight into contemporary approaches to a mechanistic understanding of these conditions, using imaging, pharmacoimaging, and computational mod.
Chair: Stephane De Brito, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
John Tully, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Julia Griem, Kings College London, United Kingdom
Ruth Pauli, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
