Citation

Visser TA, Ohan JL, Whittle S, Yücel M, Simmons JG, Allen NB. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2014; 9(4): 553-560.

Affiliation

Corresponding Author: Nicholas B. Allen, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, [p]: +61 3 8344 6325, [e]: nba@unimelb.edu.au.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/scan/nst013

PMID

23446839

Abstract

The devastating social, emotional, and economic consequences of human aggression are laid bare nightly on newscasts around the world. Aggression is principally mediated by neural circuitry comprising multiple areas of the prefrontal cortex and limbic system, including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), amygdala, and hippocampus. A striking characteristic of these regions is their structural asymmetry about the midline (i.e., left vs. right hemisphere). Variations in these asymmetries have been linked to clinical disorders characterized by aggression and the rate of aggressive behavior in psychiatric patients. Here we show for the first time that structural asymmetries in prefrontal cortical areas are also linked to aggression in a normal population of early adolescents. Our findings indicate a relationship between parent reports of aggressive behavior in adolescents and structural asymmetries in the limbic and paralimbic ACC and OFC, and moreover, that this relationship varies by sex. Furthermore, while there was no relationship between aggression and structural asymmetries in the amygdala or hippocampus, hippocampal volumes did predict aggression in females. Taken together, the results suggest that structural asymmetries in the prefrontal cortex may influence human aggression, and that the anatomical basis of aggression varies substantially by sex.

Language: en