Article Figures & Data
Figures
- Figure 1.
The emotional control AA task. The AA task involved the presentation of happy and angry faces, and the performance of approach and avoidance responses. During the AA task, the participants had to select their response according to the perceived emotion of the face. At the beginning of each block of 12 trials, the participants received instructions on whether to pull the joystick toward themselves (approach) or push it away (avoid) when seeing a face with a particular emotion. When viewing happy or angry faces, automatic stimulus–response tendencies trigger corresponding approach or avoidance actions. These tendencies could be followed during the affect-congruent condition (approach–happy, avoid–angry). In contrast, when task instructions required participants to avoid happy faces or to approach angry faces, automatic tendencies needed to be controlled and overridden with the instructed response (affect-incongruent condition). Participants saw the faces and moved the joystick while lying in a MR scanner (top left corner of the table). Figure adapted from Volman et al. (2011a, 2013).
- Figure 2.
Behavioral results. Mean RTs (±SEM) for the affect-congruent and affect-incongruent conditions of the AA task for the healthy control subjects and psychopathic offenders. The groups were significantly slower to provide affect-incongruent responses (approach–angry; avoid–happy) than affect-congruent responses (approach–happy; avoid–angry), with no significant group differences.
- Figure 3.
Testosterone modulations of the cerebral congruency effect in psychopathic offenders and healthy control subjects. A, D, Brain image showing testosterone-modulated congruency effects (affect-incongruent−affect-congruent) in the psychopathic offenders in the bilateral aPFC (A) and right supramarginal gyrus (D). B, E, Bar graphs showing the mean activation (±SEM) of the active voxels within the yellow circles per group. *pFWE < 0.05. ns, Not significant. C, F, Scatterplots showing the correlation of the mean activation of active voxels within the yellow circles with testosterone (log-transformed and standardized) for the healthy control group and the psychopathy group. The ROI activations are presented at p < 0.05, uncorrected for visualization purposes. There are no outliers [Mahalanobis distances D 2i < 4.2 (cutoff at p < 0.05; D = 7.74); Barnett and Lewis, 1978; Stevens, 1996]. Healthy control subjects show an increased aPFC activity for the congruency effect and no modulation by testosterone, while in psychopathic offenders endogenous testosterone levels modulate the activity of the aPFC and right supramarginal gyrus.
- Figure 4.
Group difference on congruency-related aPFC–amygdala connectivity. A, Brain images illustrating the congruency-related modulation of connectivity between the right aPFC (yellow circle, axial slice) and the right amygdala (coronal slice) for the congruency contrast. The activations are presented at p < 0.05, uncorrected for visualization purposes. B, Bar graph visualizing the strength of the congruency-specific change (±SEM) in aPFC–amygdala connectivity for the healthy control subjects and psychopathic offenders. There is a significant negative aPFC–amygdala coupling in the healthy control subjects, which is not present in the psychopathic offenders.
Tables
Psychopathic offenders
(n = 15)HCs
(n = 19)p value Age 37.8 (7.9) 40.7 (10.3) 0.368 IQ 101 (10) 102 (9) 0.761 Handedness 50.7 (81) 59.2 (62) 0.729 PCL-R total 30.4 (3.5) PCL-R F1 12.1 (2.6) PCL-R F2 14.1 (2.3) Values are presented as the mean (SD), unless otherwise indicated. F1, factor 1; F2, factor 2.
Psychopathic offenders HCs Approach Avoid Approach Avoid Errors (%) Happy 3.2 (0.9) 8.9 (1.8) 2.4 (0.8) 7.7 (1.1) Neutral 6.1 (1.3) 5.8 (1.1) 7.1 (1.4) 5.2 (1.0) Angry 10.1 (2.2) 13.1 (2.1) 9.6 (1.8) 11.6 (1.8) RT (ms) Happy 554 (25) 625 (35) 553 (23) 603 (25) Neutral 666 (28) 687 (31) 639 (21) 668 (24) Angry 630 (25) 665 (33) 620 (24) 630 (23) Values are presented as the mean (SE).
- Table 3:
Clusters showing significantly larger activity for the affect-incongruent vs the affect-congruent conditions (emotion-control effect)
Anatomical region Putative BA Side x y z Voxels (n) p value t value Whole-brain effects Congruency effect over groups Cuneus 18 R/L −16 −96 24 634 <0.001 4.85 SPL/Superior occipital gyrus 7/19 L −30 −76 34 254 0.004 4.37 IFG 45/47 L −52 22 −10 223 0.007 4.37 Cuneus 18 R 18 −98 16 190 0.016 4.52 Congruency effect for psychopathy group SPL/superior occipital gyrus 7/19 R/L 8 −82 38 925 <0.001 4.98 Angular gyrus 39/19 L −30 −72 34 337 0.001 4.35 Superior temporal gyrus 42 L −32 −32 6 214 0.009 4.51 SPL 7 R 28 −74 46 158 0.034 4.58 Cerebellum L −24 −66 −38 146 0.046 4.63 Negative testosterone modulation of group (psychopathic offenders > healthy control subjects) × congruency interaction aPFC 10 R 30 58 12 391 <0.001 5.10 Supramarginal gyrus 40 R 54 −42 54 325 0.001 4.66 Caudate nucleus R 10 10 2 273 0.002 4.69 Putamen/Insula L −34 6 −10 176 0.022 5.22 Cerebellum R 18 −76 −38 188 0.016 5.09 Negative testosterone modulation of Congruency effect in psychopathy Supramarginal gyrus 40 R 52 −40 54 657 <0.001 5.32 Precentral/superior frontal gyrus 6 R/L 6 22 66 471 <0.001 5.65 Caudate nucleus R 6 6 4 228 0.006 4.28 VOI on bilateral aPFC Congruency effect over groups 10 R 30 58 14 31 0.001 4.46 10 L −30 58 10 5 0.036 3.43 Congruency effect in healthy control subjects 10 R 32 58 14 12 0.001 4.58 10 L −34 52 4 2 0.040 3.40 Negative testosterone modulation of group (psychopathic offenders > healthy control subjects) × congruency interaction 10 R 30 58 12 145 <0.001 5.10 10 L −24 56 6 15 0.010 3.87 Negative testosterone modulation of congruency effect in psychopathy 10 R 32 56 10 77 0.002 4.34 10 L −30 58 8 17 0.015 3.74 Coordinates are defined in MNI (x, y, z) space. The p values represent the FWE cluster-level corrected values for the whole-brain analyses and FWE voxel-level corrected values for the VOI analyses. IFG, Inferior frontal gyrus; L, left; R, right; SPL, superior parietal lobule.
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