Social brain functioning in violent offenders with antisocial personality disorder

暴力犯罪造成了许多人的痛苦，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部分男性犯下的，他们从小就表现出反社会和攻击性行为，以童年行为障碍和成年后反社会人格障碍(ASPD)的诊断为索引。移情和社会认知，即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概念。然而，对持续性暴力犯罪者的社会脑功能障碍以及改善这些机制的可能性知之甚少。本项目旨在探索有持续性暴力犯罪史的男性中符合ASPD标准的社会认知和共情的行为和神经相关性。基于ASPD很可能伴随物质滥用的事实，对后者的控制非常关键，而以往的大多数研究都忽视了后者。本研究将分析和比较持续性暴力犯罪者、有类似物质滥用史的非犯罪者和健康对照组之间的结构和功能成像，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ASPD和暴力犯罪相关的社会脑功能，并可能有助于制定旨在改善共情和社会功能的干预计划。此外，这项研究的结果可以通过为有行为问题的青少年建立预防计划来减少暴力犯罪行为的发生，这些青少年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.