This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Brain structure differs between child, adolescent conduct disorder

Recent findings provide novel evidence of quantitative differences in structural brain organization between childhood-onset and adolescence-onset conduct disorder.

“There's evidence already of differences in the brains of individuals with serious behavioral problems, but this is often simplistic and only focused on regions such as the amygdala, which we know is important for emotional behavior,” study researcher Luca Passamonti, MD, of the University of Cambridge, said in a press release. “But conduct disorder is a complex behavioral disorder, so likewise we would expect the changes to be more complex in nature and to potentially involve other brain regions.”

To compare brain development between childhood-onset conduct disorder and adolescence-onset conduct disorder, researchers conducted MRI analysis among male youths with conduct disorder in two independent datasets. Participants in the Cambridge sample had a mean age of 18 years, while those in the Southampton sample had a mean age of 16.7 years.

In both samples, participants with childhood-onset conduct disorder exhibited a greater number of significant cross-cortical correlations, compared with healthy controls or participants with adolescence-onset conduct disorder.

Participants with adolescence-onset conduct disorder exhibited fewer significant correlations compared with healthy controls.

Researchers found group differences in strength of interregional correlations in both samples. These differences remained significant when controlling for IQ and comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms.

“The differences that we see between healthy teenagers and those with both forms of conduct disorders show that most of the brain is involved, but particularly the frontal and temporal regions of the brain,” Graeme Fairchild, BSc, PhD, of the University of Southampton, said in the release. “This provides extremely compelling evidence that conduct disorder is a real psychiatric disorder and not, as some experts maintain, just an exaggerated form of teenage rebellion.” – by Amanda Oldt

Disclosure: Fairchild reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the full study for a list of all authors’ relevant financial disclosures.