Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchCortical and Subcortical Abnormalities in Youths With Conduct Disorder and Elevated Callous-Unemotional Traits
Section snippets
Participants
A total of 49 youths participated: 22 youths with CD and 27 healthy comparison youths (Table 1). Youths were recruited from the community through newspaper ads, fliers, and referrals from area mental health practitioners. Statements of informed assent and consent were obtained from participating children and parents. This study was approved by the National Institute of Mental Health Institutional Review Board.
All youths and parents completed Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and
Results
Initially, the potential influence of sex differences was tested; however, no significant interactions with sex were found; hence, the main results below include comparisons of groups composed of both males and females. Furthermore, re-running the analyses including males only (given the small number of females) provides the same pattern of results as reported below.
Discussion
The current study examined cortical thickness, surface area, local gyrification, and volumes of several critical subcortical structures in a sample of youths with CD. This study found reduced cortical thickness within extensive regions of infero-parietal cortex (extending into the temporal–parietal junction, superior temporal cortex, and precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex in the right hemisphere), in the youths with CD relative to the typically developing group, after applying a cluster
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This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program at NIMH, NIH under grant number 1-ZIA-MH002860-08. Ethics approval for this study was granted by the NIH Combined Neuroscience Institutional Review Board under protocol number 05-M-0105.
Disclosure: Drs. Wallace, White, Sinclair, Hwang, Martin, and Blair, and Ms. Robustelli report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.