title: Psychiatric aspects of temporal lobe epilepsy before and after anterior temporal lobectomy Tit-for-tat: The neural basis of reactive aggression Impulsive and premeditated aggression: a factor analysis of self-reported acts Impulsivity-hyperactivity and subtypes of aggression in early childhood: an observational and short-term longitudinal study Neural Correlates of the Propensity for Retaliatory Behavior in Youths With Disruptive Behavior Disorders. Opiate addicts lack error-dependent activation of rostral anterior cingulate Methylphenidate Normalizes Fronto-Striatal Underactivation During Interference Inhibition in Medication-Naïve Boys with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Effects of smoking different doses of nicotine on human aggressive behavior Progressive increase of frontostriatal brain activation from childhood to adulthood during event-related tasks of cognitive control.
abstract: OBJECTIVES Psychopathology has been reported to be prevalent both before and after surgical treatment for medically intractable temporal lobe epilepsy . Individual patients were evaluated prospect ively to assess the effect of  anterior temporal lobectomy ( ATL )  on prevalence and severity of psychiatric disease . METHODS Psychiatric status was assessed in a consecutive series of  epilepsy patients before and 6 months after ATL  using a structured psychiatric interview , psychiatric rating scales , and self report mood measures . RESULTS A DSM-III-R axis I diagnosis was present in 65 % of patients before and after surgery . The most common diagnoses were depression , anxiety , and organic mood/personality disorders . There was a trend for major psychiatric diagnoses to be more common in patients with right compared to left temporal lobe seizure focus , both before and after surgery . The apparent stability in the overall rate of psychiatric dysfunction concealed onset of new psychiatric problems in 31 % of patients in the months shortly after surgery , and resolution of psychiatric diagnoses in 15 % of patients . In the group as a whole , the severity of psychiatric symptoms was lower at 6 months postsurgery than before temporal lobectomy . CONCLUSIONS The overall prevalence of psychiatric dysfunction was comparably high before and after ATL , but individual changes in psychiatric status and changes in severity of symptoms occurred in many patients in the 6 months after surgery Aggressive behavior is a basic form of human social interaction , yet little is known about its neural substrates . We used a laboratory task to investigate the neural correlates of  reactive aggression  using functional magnetic resonance imaging . The task is disguised as a reaction-time competition between the subject and two opponents and entitles the winner to punish the loser . It seeks to elicit aggression by provocation of the subject . As each single trial in this task is separated into a decision phase , during which the severity of the prospect i ve punishment of the opponent is set , and an outcome phase , during which the actual punishment is applied or received , the paradigm enables us to analyze the neural events during each of these phases . Specific neural responses in areas related to negative affect , cognitive control and reward processing provide additional information about the cognitive , emotional and motivational processes underlying reactive aggressive behavior and afford us with the possibility to test and exp and theories on aggression such as the General Aggression Model Although aggression research in general has been hampered by a lack of objective measurements of aggressive acts , two types of aggressive acts , impulsive vs. premeditated , have been studied extensively in recent years . These two types of aggression have been primarily measured by structured or semi-structured interviews . The current study was design ed to assess the construct validity of these two types of aggression using a self-report question naire which included items gleaned from the content of interviews used in past studies . For this study , 216 college students assessed their own aggressive acts rather than answering general questions about aggression . The students were not significantly different from normative sample groups on self-report measures of impulsiveness , aggression , and anger/hostility . A PCA factor analysis with a promax rotation of the items on the self-report question naire identified four factors : impulsive aggression ; mood on the day the act occurred ; premeditated aggression ; and agitation . Thus , impulsive and premeditated aggression are independent constructs which exist in varying degrees among these ' normal ' persons in a non- clinical sample . Impulsive aggression was characterized in part by feelings of remorse following the acts and by thought confusion . Premeditated aggression was related to social gain and dominance This short-term longitudinal study ( N = 112 ) was conducted to explore the concurrent and prospect i ve associations between teacher-reported impulsive-hyperactive behavior and observed relational and physical aggression during early childhood ( M = 45.54 months old , SD = 9.07 ) .  Multiple informants and methods including observational methods ( i.e. , 160 min per child ) were used to assess aggression and impulsivity-hyperactivity . All measures were found to be valid and reliable . Prospect i ve hierarchical regression analyses revealed that impulsivity-hyperactivity was associated with increases in observed physical aggression across time , controlling for initial relational aggression and gender . These findings add to the growing developmental psychopathology literature that suggests that distinguishing between subtypes of aggression during early childhood may be important for underst and ing the course of impulsivity-hyperactivity in young children . Implication s for practice are discussed OBJECTIVE Youths with disruptive behavior disorders ( DBD ) ( conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder ) have an elevated risk for maladaptive reactive aggression . Theory suggests that this is due to an elevated sensitivity of basic threat circuitry implicated in retaliation ( amygdala/periaqueductal gray ) in youths with DBD and low levels of callous-unemotional traits and dysfunctional regulatory activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in youths with DBD irrespective of callous-unemotional traits . METHOD A total of 56 youths 10 - 18 years of age ( 23 of them female ) participated in the study : 30 youths with DBD , divided by median split into groups with high and low levels of callous-unemotional traits , and 26 healthy youths . All participants completed an ultimatum game task during functional MRI . RESULTS Relative to the other groups , youths with DBD and low levels of callous-unemotional traits showed greater increases in activation of basic threat circuitry when punishing others and dysfunctional down-regulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex during retaliation . Relative to healthy youths , all youths with DBD showed reduced amygdala-ventromedial prefrontal cortex connectivity during high provocation . Ventromedial prefrontal cortex responsiveness and ventromedial prefrontal cortex-amygdala connectivity were related to patients ' retaliatory propensity ( behavioral responses during the task ) and parent-reported reactive aggression . CONCLUSIONS These data suggest differences in the underlying neurobiology of maladaptive reactive aggression in youths with DBD who have relatively low levels of callous-unemotional traits . Youths with DBD and low callous-unemotional traits alone showed significantly greater threat responses during retaliation relative to comparison subjects . These data also suggest that ventromedial prefrontal cortex-amygdala connectivity is critical for regulating retaliation/reactive aggression and , when dysfunctional , contributes to reactive aggression , independent of level of callous-unemotional traits BACKGROUND Healthy individuals performing response suppression tasks activate anterior cingulate cortex with occurrence of false alarm error responses to nontargets . Fundamental questions include whether this error-related activation provides a signal contributing to behavioral control and , given generally poorer performance on such tasks by addicts , whether this signal is disrupted in addiction . METHODS We used rapid , event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to study 13 individuals with opiate dependence and 26 healthy control individuals performing a Go/NoGo task .  RESULTS Compared with controls , opiate addicts exhibited an attenuated anterior cingulate cortex error signal and significantly poorer task performance . In controls , the individual level of event-related anterior cingulate cortex activation accompanying false alarm error positively predicted task performance , particularly sensitivity in discriminating targets from nontargets . CONCLUSIONS The attenuation of this error signal in anterior cingulate cortex may play a role in loss of control in addiction and other forms of impulsive behavior Youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD ) have deficits in interference inhibition , which can be improved with the indirect catecholamine agonist methylpheni date ( MPH ) . Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the effects of a single dose of MPH on brain activation during interference inhibition in medication-naïve ADHD boys . Medication-naïve boys with ADHD were scanned twice , in a r and omized , double-blind design , under either a single clinical dose of MPH or placebo , while performing a Simon task that measures interference inhibition and controls for the oddball effect of low-frequency appearance of incongruent trials . Brain activation was compared within patients under either drug condition . To test for potential normalization effects of MPH , brain activation in ADHD patients under either drug condition was compared with that of healthy age-matched comparison boys . During incongruent trials compared with congruent – oddball trials , boys with ADHD under placebo relative to controls showed reduced brain activation in typical areas of interference inhibition , including right inferior prefrontal cortex , left striatum and thalamus , mid-cingulate/supplementary motor area , and left superior temporal lobe . MPH relative to placebo  upregulated brain activation in right inferior prefrontal and premotor cortices . Under the MPH condition , patients relative to controls no longer showed the reduced activation in right inferior prefrontal and striato-thalamic regions . Effect size comparison , furthermore , showed that these normalization effects were significant . MPH significantly normalized the fronto-striatal underfunctioning in ADHD patients relative to controls during interference inhibition , but did not affect medial frontal or temporal dysfunction .  MPH therefore appears to have a region-specific upregulation effect on fronto-striatal activation A new methodology was employed to study the effects of drugs on human aggressive behavior  in a laboratory situation . The effects of not smoking , smoking a  low nicotine dose ( 0.42 mg/cigarette ) , and smoking a  high nicotine dose ( 2.19 mg/cigarette ) on human nonaggressive and aggressive responding was determined . A nonaggressive response , which result ed in the accumulation of money , was continuously available to the subject . Two different aggressive responses were also available : the ostensible subtraction of money from , and the ostensible presentation of a 1-s blast of white noise to a ( fictitious ) person . Aggressive responding was elicited by subtracting money from the research subjects , which was attributed to a fictitious person paired with the research subject r and omly each day . Nicotine , administered with experimental cigarettes , produced dose-dependent decreases in both types of aggressive responding elicited by low or high frequency subtractions of money attributed to another person . Generally , the more aggressive response option , i.e. , subtraction of money from another person , decreased more following nicotine administration . Smoking the same doses of nicotine increased nonaggressive monetary reinforced responding . This indicates that the suppressant effect of nicotine on aggressive responding was not due to a nonspecific depressant action Higher cognitive inhibitory and attention functions have been shown to develop throughout adolescence , presumably concurrent with anatomical brain maturational changes . The relatively scarce developmental functional imaging literature on cognitive control , however , has been inconsistent with respect to the neurofunctional substrates of this cognitive development , finding either increased or decreased executive prefrontal function in the progression from childhood to adulthood . Such inconsistencies may be due to small subject numbers or confounds from age-related performance differences in block design functional MRI ( fMRI ) . In this study , rapid , r and omized , mixed-trial event-related fMRI was used to investigate developmental differences of the neural networks mediating a range of motor and cognitive inhibition functions in a sizeable number of adolescents and adults .  Functional brain activation was compared between adolescents and adults during three different executive tasks measuring selective motor response inhibition ( Go/no-go task ) , cognitive interference inhibition ( Simon task ) , and attentional set shifting ( Switch task ) .  Adults compared with children showed increased brain activation in task-specific frontostriatal networks , including right orbital and mesial prefrontal cortex and cau date during the Go/no-go task , right mesial and inferior prefrontal cortex , parietal lobe , and putamen during the Switch task and left dorsolateral and inferior frontotemporoparietal regions and putamen during the Simon task . Whole-brain regression analyses with age across all subjects showed progressive age-related changes in similar and extended clusters of task-specific frontostriatal , frontotemporal , and frontoparietal networks . The findings suggest progressive maturation of task-specific frontostriatal and frontocortical networks for cognitive control functions in the transition from childhood to mid-adulthood
target: Results : In ADHD , deviant prefrontal and cingulate functional activity was associated with increased IA .
  Structural alterations were most pronounced in the cingulate cortex .
  Subjects with DBDs showed marked cortico‐subcortical dysfunctions .
  ADHD and DBDs share similar cortico‐limbic structural and functional alterations .
  RI deficits in ADHD highlighted hypoactivity in the dorso/ventro‐lateral PFC , insula , and striatum , while the paralimbic system was primarily dysfunctional in DBDs .
  Across disorders , extensively altered cortico‐limbic dysfunctions underlie IA , while RI was mostly associated with aberrant prefrontal activity .
  Conclusion : Control network deficits were evidence d across clinical phenotypes in IA and RI .
  Dysfunctions at any level within these cortico‐subcortical projections lead to deficient cognitive‐affective control by ascribing emotional salience to otherwise irrelevant stimuli .
background: HighlightsImpulsive aggression and dysfunctional response inhibition are present in ADHD and DBDs .
  Broad fronto‐striatal‐cerebellar dysfunctions have been implicated in ADHD and DBDs .
  Prefrontal and cingulate cortical deficits are associated with IA in ADHD.Severe widespread cortico‐subcortical breakdowns are associated with IA in DBDs .
  RI deficits have been attributed to hypoactivity in the lateral PFC , insula , and amygdala .
  Whether reduced gray matter volumes relate to ADHD and DBDs or if present as an IA epiphenomenon remains debatable .
  Background : Although impulsive aggression ( IA ) and dysfunctional response inhibition ( RI ) are hallmarks of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD ) and disrupted behavioral disorders ( DBDs ) , little is known about their shared and distinct deviant neural mechanisms .