Impaired Frontal-Basal Ganglia Connectivity in Male Adolescents with Conduct Disorder

PLOS ONE, Dec 2019

Alack of inhibition control has been found in subjects with conduct disorder (CD), but the underlying neuropathophysiology remains poorly understood. The current study investigated the different mechanism of inhibition control in adolescent-onset CD males (n = 29) and well-matched healthy controls (HCs) (n = 40) when performing a GoStop task by functional magnetic resonance images. Effective connectivity (EC) within the inhibition control network was analyzed using a stochastic dynamic causality model. We found that EC within the inhibition control network was significantly different in the CD group when compared to the HCs. Exploratory relationship analysis revealed significant negative associations between EC between the IFG and striatum and behavioral scale scores in the CD group. These results suggest for the first time that the failure of inhibition control in subjects with CD might be associated with aberrant connectivity of the frontal–basal ganglia pathways, especially between the IFG and striatum.

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Impaired Frontal-Basal Ganglia Connectivity in Male Adolescents with Conduct Disorder

December Impaired Frontal-Basal Ganglia Connectivity in Male Adolescents with Conduct Disorder Jibiao Zhang 0 1 Baojuan Li 0 1 Junling Gao 0 1 Huqing Shi 0 1 Xiang Wang 0 1 Yali Jiang 0 1 Qingsen Ming 0 1 Yidian Gao 0 1 Ren Ma 0 1 Shuqiao Yao 0 1 0 1 Department of Psychology, School of Education, Jianghan University , Wuhan, Hubei, China, 2 Medical Psychological Institute, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University , Changsha, Hunan , China , 3 School of Biomedical Engineering, Fourth Military Medical University , Xi'an, Shaanxi , China , 4 Centre of Buddhist Studies, University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong , China , 5 Department of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University , Shanghai , China , 6 National Technology Institute of Psychiatry , Changsha, Hunan , China 1 Editor: Satoru Hayasaka, Wake Forest School of Medicine, UNITED STATES Alack of inhibition control has been found in subjects with conduct disorder (CD), but the underlying neuropathophysiology remains poorly understood. The current study investigated the different mechanism of inhibition control in adolescent-onset CD males (n = 29) and well-matched healthy controls (HCs) (n = 40) when performing a GoStop task by functional magnetic resonance images. Effective connectivity (EC) within the inhibition control network was analyzed using a stochastic dynamic causality model. We found that EC within the inhibition control network was significantly different in the CD group when compared to the HCs. Exploratory relationship analysis revealed significant negative associations between EC between the IFG and striatum and behavioral scale scores in the CD group. These results suggest for the first time that the failure of inhibition control in subjects with CD might be associated with aberrant connectivity of the frontal-basal ganglia pathways, especially between the IFG and striatum. - OPEN ACCESS Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: This study was supported by grants from the National Key Technologies R&D Program of China's 11th 5-year Plan grant 2009BAI77B02, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) grant 81471384, and Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (SRFDP) grant 20130162110043. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Introduction Conduct disorder (CD) is an impulse control–related disorder characterized by impulsivity, aggression toward people or animals, property destruction, deceptiveness or theft, and serious rule violation before the age of 18 years [ 1 ]. CD has been reported to occur in about 16% of preadolescents [ 2 ], and it usually co-exists with other disorders, such asattention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and substance abuse [ 3 ]. CD incurs a large social cost [ 4 ], as it is almost always a prognosticator of antisocial personality disorder in adulthood [ 5 ]. In past decades, an enormous amount of neuroimaging research has focused on the underlying pathophysiological mechanism of CD. Converging evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies has pointed to dysregulation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) [ 6–10 ], ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC) [ 11,12 ], insula [ 12,13 ], striatum [ 7,12,14,15 ] and amygdala [ 6,14,16 ] in individuals with CD relative to healthy controls (HCs) Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. when processing emotion- and reward-related tasks. These findings have been confirmed in structural magnetic resonance imaging studies. In addition, the volumes of the PFC (including the OFC) [ 9,17,18 ], temporal cortex [ 17,19 ], amygdala [ 20–22 ], insula [ 20,21,23 ] and striatum [ 22,23 ] were found to be decreased in males with CD compared with HCs. Alack of inhibition control has also been found to be prominent in subjects with CD [ 1,24,25 ]. For example, Dougherty et al found the CD individuals showed a lower inhibited response rates to stop trials than the HCs in the GoStop task [ 26 ], a paradigm used to measure the capacity to inhibit an initiated predominant response [ 27 ]. In a previous study, we showed that individuals with CD displayed increased impulsivity [ 28 ]. Converging evidence has suggested that the stop-signal task (SST) is a suitable experimental paradigm for the examination of motor inhibitory control in various populations [ 24,29 ]. Previous research has documented the involvement of the frontal–basal ganglia pathway, including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) [ 29–31 ], supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) [ 30–32 ], striatum [ 30,31,33 ], subthalamic nucleus (STN) [ 29–31 ] and thalamus [ 29,31,34 ] in “stop” networks. However, a limited number of fMRI studies to date have investigated the neurofunctional substr (...truncated)


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Jibiao Zhang, Baojuan Li, Junling Gao, Huqing Shi, Xiang Wang, Yali Jiang, Qingsen Ming, Yidian Gao, Ren Ma, Shuqiao Yao. Impaired Frontal-Basal Ganglia Connectivity in Male Adolescents with Conduct Disorder, PLOS ONE, 2015, 12, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145011