William Atkins
Sunday, 09 November 2008 19:52
Science -
Biology
Page 2 of 4
The Chicago researchers studied eight adolescent males, between the ages of 16 and 18 years of age, with aggressive conduct disorder (CD) and another eight normal adolescent children without such CD symptoms.
Each child was scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they watched videos showing other people experiencing pain or getting hurt, or of other people not experiencing pain.
FMRI measures blood flow in the brain as it relates to neuralogical activity.
The images shown to the child subjects were of pain being inflicted upon people either accidently or by an individual whose actions were intentionally caused (such as in bullies). Other images were of non-violent content.
After the children viewed the images, each rated how painful the situations were perceived by them.
The pain was also measured with fMRI scans as they were associated with different part of the brain (the brain matrix), specifically the anterior cingulate cortex, insula cortex, somatosensory cortex, supplementary motor area, and periaqueductal gray.
The researchers found that
“The pain matrix was activated to a specific extent in participants with CD, who also showed significantly greater amygdala, striatal, and temporal pole activation. When watching situations in which pain was intentionally inflicted, control youth exhibited signal increase in the medial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and right temporo-parietal junction, whereas youth with CD only exhibited activation in the insula and precentral gyrus."
"Furthermore, connectivity analyses demonstrated that youth with CD exhibited less amygdala/prefrontal coupling when watching pain inflicted by another than did control youth.”
What does this mean? Please read page three.
