Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience of Atypical Empathy in Conduct Disorder

项目摘要 这项拟议的研究将比较评估关于生物心理机制的三种假说。 支持品行障碍(CD)的非典型共情。意义：一生中的反社会行为 造成了巨大的公共卫生负担。尽管社会因素的重要性毋庸置疑，但许多 关于儿童CD涉及的神经生物学因素仍有待了解。对他人的同情心有 被假定在抑制攻击性和其他形式的反社会行为和缺陷方面发挥关键作用 同理心会导致社交互动中的深刻干扰。因此，研究非典型肺炎的作用 移情关怀在儿童CD中具有重要意义。创新：拟议中的研究将是第一个 功能磁学对青春期前CD儿童不典型共情的神经生物学研究 磁共振成像。这将为亟需的综合生物心理学模型提供经验基础。 CD的基本脑行为过程与功能障碍的共情有关。多层次的科学研究 在处理CD等复杂现象时，分析至关重要。太多时候， 对健康人群和精神疾病人群的同理心的评估完全依赖于自我报告的测量 只提供了一种信息。方法：为了实现我们的科学目标，我们将从男性那里获得 以及符合CD诊断标准的9-11岁女性儿童(N=60)和一组非CD对照组 对60名儿童(N=60)进行一些神经生物学和行为测量，以衡量他们在观看他人痛苦时的反应。 这些措施包括：(A)大脑结构解剖和功能连接(B)神经血液动力学 对通常引起共鸣关注的视觉刺激的反应，(C)对以下因素引起的影响的主观评级 观察他人的痛苦，(D)对描述他人痛苦的刺激的接近倾向的行为测量，以及 (E)衡量自主神经系统活动。我们假设，当看到别人在痛苦中，孩子们 与CD有关的疼痛矩阵区域将显示出更大的神经血流动力学反应 直接感受疼痛的感官、辨别和情感方面。行为衡量标准将 表明CD儿童在看到他人痛苦时会有更积极的情感反应 比较孩子。此外，患有CD的儿童将表现出较少的解剖联系和功能 PFC和杏仁核之间的连接，这将与自我调节功能减弱一致 对处于困境中的其他人表示同情的情感方面。环境和调查人员：我们的 经验丰富的调查人员和顾问团队包括CD、功能神经成像和 认知神经科学，特别是在移情和心理生理测量领域。这个 芝加哥大学为该项目提供了强有力的环境和资源。

Project Summary The proposed study will comparatively evaluate three hypotheses regarding biopsychological mechanisms underpinning atypical empathy in conduct disorder (CD). Significance: Antisocial behavior across the lifespan creates an enormous public health burden. Despite the indisputable importance of social factors, much remains to be learned about neurobiological factors involved in childhood CD. Empathic concern for others has been hypothesized to play a key role in inhibiting aggression and other forms of antisocial behavior and deficits in empathy lead to profound disturbances in social interaction. Therefore, studies of the role of atypical empathic concern in childhood CD are of great importance. Innovation: The proposed study would be the first neurobiological study of atypical empathy in pre-adolescent children with CD using functional magnetic resonance imaging. It will provide the empirical basis for a much-needed integrative biopsychological model of the basic brain-behavior processes involved in dysfunctional empathy in CD. Multiple levels of scientific analysis are fundamentally important when addressing complex phenomena such as CD. Too often, the assessment of empathy in both healthy and psychiatric populations has relied solely on self-report measures that provide only one kind of information. Approach: To achieve our scientific aims we will obtain from male and female 9-11 year old children who meet diagnostic criteria for CD (N = 60) and a group of non-CD control children (N = 60) a number of neurobiological and behavioral measures of responses to viewing others in pain. These measures include: (a) structural brain anatomy and functional connectivity (b) neuro-hemodynamic responses to visual stimuli that typically evoke empathic concern, (c) subjective ratings of the affect elicited by viewing others in pain, (d) behavioral measures of approach tendencies to stimuli depicting pain in others, and (e) measures of autonomic nervous system activity. We hypothesize that when viewing others in pain, children with CD will exhibit greater neuro-hemodynamic response in areas of the pain matrix involved in both the sensory-discriminative and affective aspects of the first-hand experience of pain. The behavioral measures will indicate that children with CD experience a more positive affective response to seeing others in pain than comparison children. Furthermore, children with CD will exhibit both less anatomical connection and functional connectivity between the PFC and the amygdala, which would be consistent with diminished self-regulation of emotional aspects of empathic concern for others in distress. Environment and Investigators: Our experienced team of investigators and consultants includes experts on CD, functional neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience, especially in the area of empathy, and psychophysiological measurement. The University of Chicago provides a strong environment and resources for this project.