Activity of the Striatum in Individuals Exhibiting Antisocial Behavior After Receiving Social Feedback

Proper social behavior is learned through a process of social feedback from others, such as punishments and rewards. The striatum is important for feedback-based learning, as it is considered the reward center of the brain. This process could be dysfunctional in individuals exhibiting antisocial behavior, which could be explained by differences in striatum-activity after receiving social feedback. Non-clinically diagnosed participants (N=28, ages 18-30) were asked to fill out the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) to determine their level of antisocial behavioral traits. During a Social Network Aggression Task (SNAT), the participants received positive, neutral, or negative feedback, accompanied by a picture of a peer on the participants’ profile, while in an MRI scanner to measure striatum activity. Participants could retaliate after feedback by sending noise blasts to their peer. No main effect of YPI scores on striatum activity was found, but only after adjusting for sex....Show moreProper social behavior is learned through a process of social feedback from others, such as punishments and rewards. The striatum is important for feedback-based learning, as it is considered the reward center of the brain. This process could be dysfunctional in individuals exhibiting antisocial behavior, which could be explained by differences in striatum-activity after receiving social feedback. Non-clinically diagnosed participants (N=28, ages 18-30) were asked to fill out the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) to determine their level of antisocial behavioral traits. During a Social Network Aggression Task (SNAT), the participants received positive, neutral, or negative feedback, accompanied by a picture of a peer on the participants’ profile, while in an MRI scanner to measure striatum activity. Participants could retaliate after feedback by sending noise blasts to their peer. No main effect of YPI scores on striatum activity was found, but only after adjusting for sex. No main effect of YPI scores on noise blast duration was found either. Female participants were found to potentially discriminate more between noise blast duration sent depending on the feedback valence received, compared to male participants. Our results do not support antisocial behavior being related to a defect in social reward-based learning in non-clinical individuals, but only after correcting for sex. Sex was found to be a confounding variable when analyzing antisocial behavior, which has not always been corrected in current literature.Show less

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Activity of the Striatum in Individuals Exhibiting Antisocial Behavior After Receiving Social Feedback