Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1385782

Atypical functional connectome is associated with low reflective functioning in incarcerated adolescents

Provisionally accepted
Mélodie Derome Mélodie Derome 1,2*Larisa Morosan Larisa Morosan 2,3*Heller Patrick Heller Patrick 4,5Martin Debbané Martin Debbané 2,6
  • 1 Translational Research Center, University Hospital of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 2 Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 3 Department of Psychiatry, Interdisciplinary Centre for Psychopathology and Emotion Regulation, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands, Netherlands
  • 4 Division of Prison Health, Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève (HUG), Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 5 Adult Psychiatry Divison, Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry, University of Geneva, Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 6 Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London, London, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    While functional neuroimaging studies have reported on the neural correlates of severe antisocial behaviours, such as delinquency, little is known about whole brain resting state functional connectivity (FC) of incarcerated adolescents (IA). The aim of the present study is to identify potential differences in resting state connectivity between a group of male IA, compared to community adolescents (CA). The second objective is to investigate the relations among FC and psychological factors associated with delinquent behaviours, namely psychopathic traits (callous unemotional traits, interpersonal problems, and impulsivity), socio-cognitive (empathy and reflective functioning RF) impairments and psychological problems (externalizing, internalizing, attention and thought problems).31 male IA and 30 male CA participated in 8 minutes resting state functional MRI.Network Based Statistics (NBS) was used to compare FC among 142 brain regions between the two groups. Correlation and regressions analysis were performed to explore the associations between FC and the self-reported psychopathic traits, empathy, RF, and psychological problems.Compared to the CA, the IA group presented significantly increased resting state FC in a distributed subnetwork including medial prefrontal, posterior and dorsal cingulate, temporal, and occipital regions. Both within the IA group and across the whole sample, increased mean connectivity of the subnetwork correlated with lower RF (RF uncertainty). Across the whole sample, the mean connectivity was associated with higher scores of externalizing problems and impulsivity dimension of psychopathy.While extending the characterization of whole brain resting state FC in IA, our results also provide insights into the neurofunctional mechanisms linking low reflective functioning abilities to externalizing behaviour during adolescence.

    Keywords: Incarceration, RS-fMRI, reflective functioning, psychopathy, Delinquency, Externalizing behaviours

    Received: 13 Feb 2024; Accepted: 06 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Derome, Morosan, Patrick and Debbané. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Mélodie Derome, Translational Research Center, University Hospital of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
    Larisa Morosan, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, 1211, Geneva, Switzerland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.