Social brain functioning in violent offenders with antisocial personality disorder

暴力犯罪给人类造成了巨大的痛苦，是一个代价高昂的社会问题，占西方工业国家国内生产总值的5%至12%。大多数暴力犯罪是由一小群男性犯下的，他们从小就表现出反社会和攻击性行为，根据儿童时期的行为障碍和成年后的反社会人格障碍（ASPD）的诊断进行索引。移情和社会认知是理解和推断自我和他人心理状态的能力，已被提出来理解暴力和犯罪行为的重要结构。然而，鲜为人知的是，持续暴力犯罪者与ASPD的社会大脑功能障碍，重要的是关于改善这些mechanism.The本项目的可能性，旨在探讨行为和神经相关的社会认知和同情的男性与持续暴力犯罪的历史谁符合ASPD的标准。基于反社会人格障碍很可能伴随药物滥用这一事实，对药物滥用的控制是非常关键的，这一点以前被大多数研究所忽视。本研究将对持续性暴力犯罪的反社会人格障碍患者、有类似药物滥用史的非犯罪者和健康对照者的脑结构和功能成像以及共情和心理理论的激素生物标志物进行分析和比较，本研究的结果可能会进一步了解与反社会人格障碍和暴力犯罪相关的社会脑功能，并可能有助于发展干预计划，解决移情和社会功能的改善。此外，这项研究的结果可以用来减少暴力犯罪行为的发生，通过建立预防方案的青少年提出的行为问题，谁是在风险成为暴力犯罪者。

Violent criminal offending causes much human suffering and is a costly social problem, accounting for 5% to 12% of the gross domestic product of western industrial states. Most violent crimes are committed by a small group of males who have displayed antisocial and aggressive behavior since childhood, indexed by diagnoses of Conduct Disorder in childhood and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) in adulthood. Empathy and social cognition that is the ability to infer and comprehend the mental states of self and others, has been proposed important constructs for understanding violence and delinquent behavior. However, little is known about social brain dysfunctions of persistent violent offenders with ASPD and importantly about the possibility of improving these mechanisms.The present project aims to explore behavioral and neural correlates of social cognition and empathy among men with a history of persistent violent offending who meet criteria for ASPD. Based on the fact that ASPD is likely to be accompanied by substance misuse, it is very crucial to control for the latter, which has previously been neglected by the majority of studies. Structural and functional imaging as well as hormonal biomarkers of empathy and theory of mind will be analyzed and compared among persistent violent offenders with ASPD, non-offenders with similar histories of substance misuse and healthy controls.The results of the present investigation might further the understanding of social brain functions associated with ASPD and violent crime, and may contribute to the development of intervention programs addressing the improvement of empathic and social functioning. In addition, the findings of this study could be utilized to reduce the occurrence of violent criminal behavior through the establishment of prevention programs for juveniles presenting conduct problems, who are at risk to become violent offenders.