The Cognitive Neuroscience of Female Psychopathy

描述(申请人提供)：精神病是一种由一系列人际、情感和行为特征组成的人格障碍。精神病患者对刑事和非刑事的公民骚乱负有不成比例的责任。精神病的社会成本与其他类似患病率的主要精神疾病(约占总人口的1%)不相上下。然而，相对于其他主要的精神健康障碍(如精神分裂症)，我们对精神疾病的相关神经生物学才刚刚开始了解。边缘和边缘旁脑区包括杏仁核、眼眶额叶皮质、前颞叶以及前和后扣带回似乎与这种疾病有关。尽管取得了这些进展，但精神病的认知神经科学几乎仅限于男性样本。历史记录和最近的临床评估数据表明，精神变态的概念在女性中具有类似于男性的心理测量学特性。然而，到目前为止，还没有关于女性精神病的认知神经科学研究。本建议的目的是检查患有精神变态的女性罪犯边缘和边缘旁回路的完整性。电生理和血流动力学成像数据将被用来绘制与注意控制、错误监控和道德决策相关的功能神经结构图，这些女性罪犯根据精神病评分进行分层。这项研究将利用移动核磁共振系统，该系统将被部署到监狱设施中，以收集大量女性罪犯的样本。对这一大样本女性罪犯的详细分析将使我们能够全面评估精神变态的边缘旁功能障碍假说，酒精和药物滥用的缓和影响，并评估关于女性精神变态结构的维度或范畴性质的心理测量模型。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Psychopathy is a personality disorder comprised of a constellation of interpersonal, affective and behavioral characteristics. Individuals with psychopathy are responsible for a disproportionate amount of civil disruption, both criminal and noncriminal. The societal cost of psychopathy rivals that of other major mental illnesses of similar prevalence (~1% general population). However, relative to other major mental health disorders (e.g., schizophrenia), we are only beginning to understand the relevant neurobiology of psychopathy. Aspects of limbic and paralimbic brain regions including the amygdala, orbital frontal cortex, anterior temporal lobe, and anterior and posterior cingulate appear to be implicated in the disorder. Despite these advances, the cognitive neuroscience of psychopathy has nearly exclusively been limited to samples of men. Historical accounts and recent clinical assessment data suggest that the construct of psychopathy has similar psychometric properties in women as it does in men. However, to date there have been no cognitive neuroscience studies of psychopathy in women. The purpose of the present proposal is to examine the integrity of the limbic and paralimbic circuitry in female offenders with psychopathy. Electrophysiological and hemodynamic imaging data will be used to map the functional neural architecture associated with attentional control, error-monitoring, and moral decision-making in female offenders stratified by psychopathy scores. This research will utilize a mobile MRI system that will be deployed to prison facilities to collect a large sample of female offenders. Detailed analyses of this large sample of female offenders will enable us to comprehensively evaluate the paralimbic dysfunction hypothesis of psychopathy, the moderating impact of alcohol and substance abuse, and to evaluate psychometric models regarding the dimensional or categorical nature of the construct of psychopathy in women.