Altered hemodynamic activity in conduct disorder: a resting-state FMRI investigation

Jiansong Zhou; Nailin Yao; Graeme Fairchild; Yingdong Zhang; Xiaoping Wang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0122750

Altered hemodynamic activity in conduct disorder: a resting-state FMRI investigation

PLoS One. 2015 Mar 27;10(3):e0122750. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122750. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Jiansong Zhou¹, Nailin Yao², Graeme Fairchild³, Yingdong Zhang¹, Xiaoping Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Mental Health Institute of The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University; Hunan Province Technology Institute of Psychiatry; Key Laboratory of Psychiatry and Mental Health of Hunan Province, Changsha, China.
² Department of Psychiatry, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³ Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Background: Youth with conduct disorder (CD) not only inflict serious physical and psychological harm on others, but are also at greatly increased risk of sustaining injuries, developing depression or substance abuse, and engaging in criminal behaviors. The underlying neurobiological basis of CD remains unclear.

Objective: The present study investigated whether participants with CD have altered hemodynamic activity under resting-state conditions.

Methods: Eighteen medication-naïve boys with CD and 18 age- and sex- matched typically developing (TD) controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in the resting state. The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) was measured and compared between the CD and TD groups.

Results: Compared with the TD participants, the CD participants showed lower ALFF in the bilateral amygdala/parahippocampus, right lingual gyrus, left cuneus and right insula. Higher ALFF was observed in the right fusiform gyrus and right thalamus in the CD participants compared to the TD group.

Conclusions: Youth with CD displayed widespread functional abnormalities in emotion-related and visual cortical regions in the resting state. These results suggest that deficits in the intrinsic activity of resting state networks may contribute to the etiology of CD.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Brain Mapping
Conduct Disorder / etiology
Conduct Disorder / physiopathology*
Hemodynamics*
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Occipital Lobe
Temporal Lobe / physiopathology*
Visual Cortex / physiopathology*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Key Projects in the National Science & Technology Pillar Program during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan Period (2012BAK16B00), MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Project No. 13YJC190033), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, 30800368, 81371500), and the Science and Technology Committee of Shanghai Municipality for Shanghai Key Lab of Forensic Medicine (12DZ2271500: KF1006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.