Social brain functioning in violent offenders with antisocial personality disorder

• Applicant: Professor Boris Schiffer, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Clinical Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280687978

Violent criminal offending causes much human suffering and is a costly social problem, accounting for 5% to 12% of the gross domestic product of western industrial states. Most violent crimes are committed by a small group of males who have displayed antisocial and aggressive behavior since childhood, indexed by diagnoses of Conduct Disorder in childhood and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) in adulthood. Empathy and social cognition that is the ability to infer and comprehend the mental states of self and others, has been proposed important constructs for understanding violence and delinquent behavior. However, little is known about social brain dysfunctions of persistent violent offenders with ASPD and importantly about the possibility of improving these mechanisms.The present project aims to explore behavioral and neural correlates of social cognition and empathy among men with a history of persistent violent offending who meet criteria for ASPD. Based on the fact that ASPD is likely to be accompanied by substance misuse, it is very crucial to control for the latter, which has previously been neglected by the majority of studies. Structural and functional imaging as well as hormonal biomarkers of empathy and theory of mind will be analyzed and compared among persistent violent offenders with ASPD, non-offenders with similar histories of substance misuse and healthy controls.The results of the present investigation might further the understanding of social brain functions associated with ASPD and violent crime, and may contribute to the development of intervention programs addressing the improvement of empathic and social functioning. In addition, the findings of this study could be utilized to reduce the occurrence of violent criminal behavior through the establishment of prevention programs for juveniles presenting conduct problems, who are at risk to become violent offenders.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Martin Brüne