Crime - Lecture 4

Autonomic Nervous System correlates of ASB and violent behaviours

nervous system

autonomic nervous system controls physiological arousal

low resting HR and ASB: theories - fearlessness theory (Raine, 1993)

• hypothesises that low HR is a marker for low fear, which could disrupt early fear conditioning and in turn facilitate criminal acts that require a degree of fearlessness to complete

• under this view, antisoical acts would be faciliated by a lack of fear regarding the antisocial context and potential punishment if apprehended

low resting HR and ASB: theories - sensation-seeking theory (quay, 1965)

• rests on the premise that a low resting heart rate is a marker of low autonomic arousal, which is thought to be an unpleasant physiological state

• as a result, individuals with low resting HRs seek stimulating behaviours, including antisocial behaviours, to increase their level of arousal to a more optimal level (e.g. fights)

• in serial killers:

  • period of time after killing when they go under the radar and do not kill for a period of time

  • there’s tension that builds up

  • thats when they start to commit murders

low resting HR: antisocial children - davies & maliphant (1971)

• 12-16 yo english boarding school pupils

• refractory (difficult) group (low resting HR) < non-refractory group

low resting HR: antisocial children - wadsworth (1976)

• 1,813 male English, Scottish and Welsh 11-year-old school children

• official delinquent < non-delinquent

low resting HR: antisocial children - little (1978) school

• english male and female school children aged 9-11

• those defined as antisocial had lower resting HR compared to those identified as well-behaved

low resting HR: antisocial children - west and farrington (1977)

• 18-19 year old non-institutionalised english males

• those with wither adult or juvenile offences were overrepresented in the group of youths with low pulse rate

low resting HR: antisocial children - venable (1983)

• 245 11-year-old children of criminal, schizophrenic and psychiatrically normal parents in copenhagen

• children with criminal fathers (low resting HR) < children of non-criminals

low resting HR: antisocial children - ortiz and raine - meta-analysis

• 45 independent effect sizes obtained from 40 studies

• studies conducted between 1971 and 2002

• total of 5,868 children

• the main method of analysis was comparing antisocial children and controls for resting HR at rest

• a secondary meta-analysis was also conducted on heart rate during a stressor

• significant overall effect sizes were found for both resting HR and heart rate during a stressor

• results were not moderated by gender, age, method of recording, use of psychiatric control group, recruitment source, concurrent versus prospective nature of testing, and source of behavioural rating

low resting HR: twin and intergenerational evidence - baker et al.

• genetic & environmental influencles to resting HR and the link to ASB

• prospective longitudinal design (9&14)

• demonstrated a genetic and environmental effect on low resting HR

• present throughout development from age 9 to 14

low resting HR: twin and intergenerational evidence - venable

• 245 11-year-old children of criminal, schizophrenic and psychiatrically normal parents in copenhagen

• children with criminal fathers < children of non-criminals

low resting HR and ASB: longtidunial evidence

• suggests a causal association can be found using a prospective longitdunial design

• selected samples of males

low resting HR and ASB: longtidunial evidence - limitations

• often small sample size

• many looked at young children/adolecents

  • the follow up period was quite short

low resting HR and ASB: longtidunial evidence - population-based study (latvala et al.)

• population study (representative of the general population)

  • used swedish national resident number

• age 18 had to do military service

  • medical exam: HR was measured

• follow up period (nearly 36 years)

• low resting HR associated with increased criminality and exposure to assault in adulthood

• low resting HR predictive of a high rate of crime (apart from sexual)

low resting HR and ASB: longtidunial evidence - murray et al.

• found an association between low resting HR and subsequent crime

• used wrist monitor to measure HR at age 11, 15 and 18 years

• looked at violent and non-violent crime at age 18

• low resting HR predicted violent and non-violent crime

• only cross-sectionally associated with crime in females

low resting HR and ASB: potential confounds

• could social factors explain this relationship by increasing the risk for both low resting HR and ASB

• farrington (1997) showed that out of 48 individual and environmental predictors of violence, only low resting HR and poor concentration were independently related to violence

  • low resting HR at age 18 was significantly associated with self-reported violence at age 18 and teacher-reported aggression at age 14

  • the relationship was found irrespective of several potential conflicting confounds (e.g. personality, poor concentration, education, family factors, and SES)

  • only resting HR and poor concentration were independently associated with violence

  • prospective longitudinal study - following men for several decades

gao et al. - role of associative learning in childhood socialisation

children learn to avoid antisocial actions by pairing rule-breaking cues and subsequent socialising punishments, developing conditioned anticipatory fear that deter future misconduct

gao et al. - anticipatory fear hypothesis of ASB

individuals who fail to acquire anticipatory fear or anxiety to warning cues lack the internal emotional brake (conscience) needed to suppress prohibited criminal acts

gao et al. - key neural substrates implicated in fear conditioning and aversive learning

the amygdala and the ventral prefrontal cortex (including the orbitofrontal cortex)

gao et al. - core hypothesis

poor autonomic fear conditioning at age 3 relfects early amygdala-prefrontal dysfunction amd prospectively predicts criminal offeding in adulthood

gao et al. - cohort name and baseline sample size

the mauritius joint child health project, consisting of n=1,795 children initially tested at age 3

gao et al. - psychophysiological modality used to index fear conditioning at age 3

electrodermal responses/skin conductance responding (SCR), relfecting autonomic sympathetic nervous system activity

gao et al. - CS+, CS-, and UCS parameters in the age 3 classical conditioning task

• CS+ was a tone paired with an aversive 90-dB loud noise (UCS)

• CS- was an unreinfornced tone presented without noise

gao et al. - unconditioned stimulus (UCS) characteristics

an unpleasant, loud 90-dB noise lasting 4.5 seconds

gao et al. - follow-up age and source of criminal outcome data

ppts were reassessed 20 years later at age 23 using official nationwide court conviction records in mauritius

gao et al. - offender group composition and offence criteria at age 23

n = 137 individuals (131 males, 6 females) convicted of property, violent, crug, or serious driving offences (petty offences excluded)

gao et al. - case-control matching ratio and total comparison group size

a 1:2 mathced design where each of the 137 offenders was matched with two non-offender controls, yielding n=274 comparison subjects

gao et al. - confounding variables controlled via matching

gender, age, ethnicity, and a 9-point childhood social adversity index measured at age 3

gao et al. - electrodermal conditioning response of the comparison group (n = 274)

robust differential conditioning: significantly greater skin conductance responses to the CS+ relative to the CS-

gao et al. - electrodermal response of the future offender group (n = 137)

differential conditioning failure: no significant difference in skin conductance between the CS+ and CS-

gao et al. - theoretical significance of matching for childhood social adversity

demonstrated that the poor conditioning deficit in future criminals was independent of early socioeconomic, environmental, or family deprivation

gao et al. - neurodevelopmental precursor concept established

autonomic fear conditioning deficits at age 3 precede criminality by 20 years, serving as an early neurobiological marker rather than a byproduct of offedning

gao et al. - double dissociation of amugdala vs hippocampal damage in fear conditioning (bechara et al., 1995)

• amygdala lesions abolish autonomic conditioned fear (SCR) while sparing declarative memory

• hippocampal lesions spare fear conditioning but impair declarative recall

gao et al. - role of the insular cortex in emotional processing and conditioning

the insula supports interoception (awareness of bodily/visceral changes) and integrates autonomic arousal into conscious feeling states

gao et al. - fmri findings during fear acquisition in psychopathy (birbaumer et al.) he

healthy controls showed enhanced activation in the front-limbic circuit (amygdala, OFC, insula, anterior cingulate), whereas individuals with psychopathy exhibited deficient activation

gao et al. - fear conditioning findings in youths with CD (fairchild et al.)

both early-onset and adolescence-onset CD youths (male and female) showed impaired electrodermal fear conditioning and blunted startle modulation

gao et al. - early intervention implications

enrichment programs in early childhood focusing on nutrition, physical health, and cognitive stimulation can enhance brain development and potentially reduce adult criminality

gao et al. - the multifactorial caveat emphasised

• adult crime cannot be deterministically predicted by a single biological marker

• it arises from complex interactions among neurobiology, genetics, parenting, and social environments

gao et al. - latency window for conditioned responses

skin conductance responses occuring within specific latency windows (e.g. 1-3 seconds and 11-13 seconds after CS onset, prior to UCS presentation)

gao et al. - comparison of UCR between offenders and controls

offenders reacted normally to the loud noise itself (UCR), proving their deficit was specific to associative anticipation (CR) rather than sensory deafness or somatic paralysis

gao et al. - low resting HR vs poor fear conditioning as ANS markers for ASB

low resting HR relfects tonic autonomic hypoarousal and sensation-seeking/fearlessness, whereas poor electrodermal fear conditioning reflects phasic deficits in associative punishment learning

fagan et al. - primary research question

does autonomic nervous system activity mediate the link between childhood social adversity and antisocial behaviour, and does this indirect pathway differ by sex?

fagan et al. - sample and setting

339 community children aged 7-10 years from Brooklyn, New York

fagan et al. - three cardiovascular measures and their ANS functions

1. resting HR: overall cardian activity

2. HR variability: parasympathetic vagal tone

3. pre-ejection period: sympathetic cardiac drive

fagan et al. - key mediation finding in boys

• resting HR was a significant mediator

• early social adversity lowered resting HR, which in turn predicted greater ASB

fagan et al. - key findings in girls

social adversity directly predicted antisocial behaviour without any medication by cardiovascular measures

fagan et al. - role of isolated autonomic branches (HRV and PEP)

neither HRV nor PEP mediated the relationship on their own, demonstrating that low resting HR reflects complex autonomic co-regulation rather than simple sympathetic under-arousal

fagan et al. - three theoretical frameworks tested

1. sensation-seeking/under-arousal theory

   1. misconduct elevates unpleasant low arousal

2. fearlessnear theory

   1. low fear impairs punishment learning

3. blunted stress hypothesis

   1. chronic stress suppresses physiological reactivity

fagan et al. - practical intervention proposed

providing structured, prosocial opportunities that safely elevate physiological arousal (such as competitive sports or vigourous physical activities) for low-HR boys

fagan et al. - primary methodological limitation

cross-sectional design, which prevents confirming true causal temporal ordering between adversity, physiology, and behaviour

fagan et al. - assessment of ASB

caregiver ratings across multiple clinical scales (CBCL, APSD, ICU, DISC-IV) combined into a single factor measuring aggression, rule-breaking, callousness, and conduct problems

raine et al. (1995) - high resting HR as a protective factor for ASB

• collected data from males at age 15 (resting HR) and criminal behaviour at age 30

• desistors had significantly higher electrodermal arousal and higher electrodermal orienting than the criminal group

• risk factor of low resting HR

• also collected skin conductance

  • electrodes measure how electricity travels to tissue

  • how sweat glands function

  • SNS activity - not under our control

  • not everyone feels fear to the same extent as others

blair et al. - skin conductance: fear conditioning and conscience

• speculate skin conductance response can be something people learn

• acquired through repeated exposure to certain things in early ages

lorber et al. - learning fear conditioning, so using skin conductance

• different measures of ANS functionality were paired with different types of offending

• dampening of ANS associated with psychopathic traits

• was not unanimous across all features of criminal behaviour

• skin conductance

  • higher skin conductance related to higher aggressive behaviour

  • may be reactive aggression that causes higher skin conductance

association of poor childhood fear conditioning and adult crime

• skin conductance response

• tried to match ppts characteristics such that criminal offenders were similar to the comparison group

• repeated exposure to a stimulus; becomes a conditioned response

  • classical conditioning

• measure response to an UCS

• CS+ → warning cue before unpleasant stimulus

  • criminals do not respond as strongly to stimulus

  • reduced fear response

• CS- → skin conductance is the same for both groups

bechara et al. - amygdala fear conditioning - double dissociation

• amygdala and hippocamus intact

  • for the CS+ task, they experience an increase in response

• the patient with bilateral amygdala damage failed to fear-condition to aversive stimuli but could nevertheless report the facts about the conditioning experience

• in contrast, another patient with hippocampal damage successfully acquired a conditoned fear response but had no explicit memory of the conditioning procedure (declarative issues)

  • indicating that fear conditioning depends on the amygdala

• patient with damage in both struggled with both conditioning and declarative

the insular cortex or insula

• cerebral cortex structure located deep within the lateral fissure between the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe

• the insula rather than the hippocampus may be the crucial region involved in the perception of bodily changes (i.e. interoception ability)

• insula is involved in a range of emotional processes, including:

  • recognition

  • experience

  • empathy

• interoception: ability to feel your inner body

insula and interoception - critchley et al.

• measured someone’s HR

• able to instantly present info on a screen

• asked “is this info correct with how you feel?”

• sometimes manipulated the information

• measured how accurate people were with their own physiological understanding of their bodiies

• better detection was associated with increased activity and greater grey matter volume in right anterior insula

insula and interoception - birbanner et al. - methods

• one of the faces was associated and conditioned to relate to pain

  • swapped between the two images

• CS+ → stimulus is displayed, and another stimulus follows

• CS- → stimulus is displayed, but is not followed

• asked ppts whether they felt pain

• valence: the spectrum of what we perceive as positive and negative

  • e.g. how positive the experience was

• arousal: how strongly your nervous system is activated

• habituation: get used to the environment

• AC1: early learning, AC2: late learning

• ext: how quickly you recover from the pain

insula and interoception - birbanner et al. - results (overall)

• healthy controls and psychopaths both felt pain in CS+

  • both reliably said no pain in CS-

• valence

  • significant difference in AC2

  • psychopaths do not experience a difference in valence in CS+/-

  • healthy controls feel more negative in CS+

• arousal

  • healthy controls did not recover as quickly after CS+

• based on self-report (psychopaths do not want to seem like psychopaths)

• skin conductance rates (SCRs)

  • healthy controls responded more highly to CS+

  • psychopaths did not respond much differently between the two

  • can report they feel the pain, but their body does not show

insula and interoception - birbanner et al. - results (brain)

• healthy controls show a lot of activity in certain areas of the brain

  • limbic and frontal structures are very active

• for psychopaths, this is not shown

• it is the composition of info that travels across the brain that is affected, not just one area

fairchild et al. - fear conditioning and startle reflex (males)

• HC = healthy controls

• AO-CD = adolescent-onset CD

• EO-CD = early-onset CD

• healthy controls

  • no skin conductance response in the acquisiton phase

  • there is in the CS+ phase

• AO-CD & EO-CD

  • SNS does not respond to the CS+ condition

  • both groups have the same problems

fairchild et al. - fear conditioning and startle reflex (females)

• looked into females

• control and CD

• controls

  • response to CS+, but not to CS-

• cannot see this in females with CD

  • universal across sexes

• CD and skin conductance response are correlated

• looked into whether skin conductance response to CS+ was unique

  • ppts with CD had lower skin conductance response to pain across different types of stimuli than controls

measurement of the startle reflex

• elicited with a brief burst of white noise (“startle probe”) presented over headphones

• eyeblink response is indexed by recording electrical activity in the orbicularis oculi muscle

• can measure HR, breathing, and muscle contraction

• blink at a slower rate when you’re calmer then when stressed

grillion & patrick - advantages of the startle reflex

• the startle reflex is a ubiquitous, cross-species response to abrupt and intense stimulation

• the neurobiological substrates of startle and fairly well-delineated, allowing for greater hypothesis testing and generalisability of the results

• as an automatic/relfexive (<50 ms) subcortical measure, it is less influenced by intentional control

• in contrast to other measures indexing autonomic responding (e.g. HR or electrodermal measures), it indexes aversive emotional activation (i.e. valence) independently of arousal and experimental task demands

• no physiological measure to measure valence

• a lot og psychological traits stimulate the SNS

  • measurements, e.g. skin conductance, don’t tell us if it is positive or negative

  • blink/startle reflex does

• threatening information

  • largely increases eye blinks

  • for both medium and high intensity

emotion manipulation

pleasanmat, neutral and unpleasant pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS)

major dependent measure

• startle reflex response

• response matching hypothesis

  • startle reflex is a defensive response

  • the magnitude of the reflex is INCREASED when the organism if fearful (fear-potentiated startle; FPS)

  • the magntiude of the reflex is DECREASED when the organism is “feeling good”

• pleasant images paired with negative stimuli, same with neural and unpleasant images

neural circuits mediating fear-potentiated startle reflex

• processed by receiving information received from the outside (eyes)

• information is processed in the pons in the brain stem

  • specifically in the cochlear nucleus

• then to the cortex back to the muscles to process the blink response

fear-potentiated startle reflex and the amygdala

1. information goes through the root neurons (pons)

2. processed in specific areas of the pons

3. then back to motor neruons to generate the blink

4. the amygdala steps in before the motor neurons to determine when the detected information is dangerous, something to be fearful of

5. if the amygdala is impaired, the ability to detect fearful information is diminished

psychopathy and the low fear hypothesis - blair et al.

• there is a considerable body of evidence that suggests that individuals with psychopathy are impaired in the processing of fear-related stimuli (amygdala)

• psychopaths typically show impaired:

  • aversive conditioning

  • autonomic responses to anticipated threat

  • passive avoidance learning

  • the augmentation of the startle reflex to visual threat primes

patrick et al. - psychopathy and the fear-enhanced startle reflex - PCL-R

• two types of psychopaths

• PCL-R measures those two types/factors

• factor 1 - typical pyschopath

  • emotionally, regulated, cool and collected, doesn’t show many emotions

  • neurologically acquired

• factor 2 - just antisocial

  • typically bullies

  • react with aggression, emotionally disregulated, cannot control themselves

  • acquired psychopathy

  • do not have the typical amygdala impairments, just adverse childhood experiences

patrick et al. - psychopathy and the fear-enhanced startle reflex - methods

• study sample: 54 male prisoners (sexual offenders) assessed using the PCL-R

• mean age = 30.9

• participants were shown slides of three types:

  • pleasant (e.g. erotic scenes)

  • neutral (e.g. plants)

  • unpleasant (e.g. mutilated bodies)

• a loud tone was played during the slide presentation to induce a startle response in the participants

patrick et al. - psychopathy and the fear-enhanced startle reflex - factor separation results

• found everyone who scored highly on factor 2 and separated them from those with factor 1&2

• usually if someone has factor 1, they also have factor 2

patrick et al. - psychopathy and the fear-enhanced startle reflex - overall results

• high factor 2

  • blink rate on the rise from pleasant to unpleasant images

• hight factor 1 & 2

  • low blink rate for both pleasant and unpleasant images

  • increased rate in the neutral

• provides further evidence for the distinction between factor 1 & 2 in psychopathy

fairchild et al. - startle reflex modulation in youths with CD

• males with adolescent-onset do not differ hugely from early onset on the fear-potentiated startle reflex

  • differ for control groups

  • is not a specific pattern for the different types of valence (positive, sad, etc.)

• same happens for females

  • blink rate is reduced across the different valence for CD

lecture summary

• antisocial and violent behaviour in youths and adults has been associated with abnormal ANS functioning

  • low resting HR, low skin conductance, low FP startle reflex

• fearlessness, sensation-seeking, and low conscious development have been proposed as mechanisms in major theories

• meta-analystic and prospective longitudinal evidence

• neuroimaging and lesion studies point to abnormalities within the amygdala and the insular cortex

• there does not seem to be sex differences in youths with CD