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%。大多数暴力犯罪都是由一小群从小就表现出反社会和攻击性行为的男性犯下的，他们在童年时被诊断为行为障碍，在成年后被诊断为反社会人格障碍（ASPD）。共情和社会认知是推断和理解自我和他人心理状态的能力，被认为是理解暴力和犯罪行为的重要结构。然而，我们对持续性暴力犯罪者的社会脑功能障碍知之甚少，重要的是我们对改善这些机制的可能性知之甚少。本项目旨在探讨符合反社会障碍标准的有持续暴力犯罪史的男性的社会认知和共情的行为和神经相关性。鉴于反社会人格障碍很可能伴有药物滥用，因此对后者进行控制是非常重要的，而这一点在之前的大多数研究中被忽视了。将分析和比较持续性暴力犯罪者与反社会人格障碍患者、具有相似药物滥用史的非犯罪者和健康对照者的结构和功能成像以及共情和心理理论的激素生物标志物。本研究的结果可能会进一步了解与反社会障碍和暴力犯罪相关的社会脑功能，并可能有助于制定解决共情和社会功能改善的干预方案。此外，本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，为有行为问题的青少年，他们有成为暴力罪犯的风险。

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.