‘Brain scans of 9- to 11-year-olds offer clues about aggressive, antisocial behavior’
3 August 2020
16:00
The behavioral problems of a nine-year-old tend to look very different from those of a teenager. What if, before any severe delinquency and rule-breaking began, the young child’s brain function and reward-seeking behaviors could provide clues about whether antisocial behavior, violence, and aggression might develop later?
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Using data from the National Institutes of Health’s Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which started in 2015 and will follow about 12,000 9- to 11-year-olds for a decade, the researchers first looked at gray matter volume in the brain. They found that compared to typically developing children, those with disruptive behavior disorders had less gray matter in the amygdala and hippocampus, areas associated with processing emotion and forming memories.
