Pardini, Dustin and Phillips, Mary L. 2010. Neural responses to emotional and neutral facial expressions in chronically violent men. Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience 35 (6) , pp. 390-398. 10.1503/jpn.100037 |
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Abnormal neural responses to others' emotions, particularly cues of threat and distress, have been implicated in the development of chronic violence. We examined neural responses to several emotional cues within a prospectively identified group of chronically violent men. We also explored the association between neural responses to social emotions and psychopathic features. METHODS: We compared neural responses to happy, sad, angry, fearful and neutral faces between chronically violent (n = 22) and nonviolent (n = 20) men using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants were prospectively identified from a longitudinal study based on information collected from age 7 to 27 years. We assessed psychopathic features using a self-report measure administered in adulthood. RESULTS: The chronically violent men exhibited significantly reduced neural responses in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex to all faces, regardless of the emotional content, compared with nonviolent men. We also observed a hyperactive amygdala response to neutral faces in chronically violent men, but only within the context of viewing happy faces. Moreover, they exhibited a greater dorsomedial prefrontal cortex response to mildly fearful faces than nonviolent men. These abnormalities were not associated with psychopathic features in chronically violent men. LIMITATIONS: It remains unclear whether the observed neural abnormalities preceded or are a consequence of persistent violence, and these results may not generalize to chronically violent women. CONCLUSION: Chronically violent men exhibit a reduced neural response to facial cues regardless of emotional content. It appears that chronically violent men may view emotionally ambiguous facial cues as potentially threatening and implicitly re-interpret subtle cues of fear in others so they no longer elicit a negative response.
Item Type: | Article |
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Date Type: | Publication |
Status: | Published |
Schools: | MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG) Medicine |
Subjects: | R Medicine > R Medicine (General) |
Publisher: | Canadian Medical Association |
ISSN: | 1180-4882 |
Last Modified: | 04 Nov 2015 15:42 |
URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/80511 |
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