Citation

Cope LM, Ermer E, Nyalakanti PK, Calhoun VD, Kiehl KA. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2014; 42(4): 659-668.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA, lcope@med.umich.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10802-013-9810-4

PMID

24682609

Abstract

Psychopathy-related paralimbic and limbic structural brain abnormalities have been implicated in incarcerated adult and adolescent male samples. However, there have been few neuroimaging studies of psychopathic traits in females in general and no studies from incarcerated female youth in particular. Here we present the first study to examine the relationship between brain gray matter volumes and psychopathic traits (assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version [PCL-YV]) in a sample of maximum-security incarcerated female adolescents (N = 39; mean age = 17.6 years). Consistent with male samples, regional gray matter volumes were negatively related to psychopathic traits in female youth offenders in limbic and paralimbic areas, including orbitofrontal cortex, parahippocampal cortex, temporal poles, and left hippocampus. These results provide evidence that psychopathic traits manifest similar neural abnormalities across sex and age.

Language: en