Dorsal ACC activation reduced in youths with disruptive behaviour disorder during reward anticipation

Adolescents with disruptive behaviour disorder (DBD), with and without callous-unemotional (CU) traits, have reduced dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activation during reward anticipation relative to typically developing youths, a study has shown.

The investigators obtained data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (mean age 9.51 years, 49 percent female). They examined reward-related activation during the monetary incentive delay task across 16 brain regions, including the amygdala, ACC, nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Network-level coactivation was examined using latent variable modeling.

The investigators compared the following diagnostic groups: typically developing youths (n=693) and youths with DBDs (n=995), subdivided into those with CU traits (DBD+CU, N=198) and without CU traits (DBD only, N=276).

Youths in the overall DBD group, with and without CU traits, demonstrated decreased dorsal ACC activation compared with typically developing individuals during reward anticipation. The DBD-only group had reduced ventral and dorsal striatal activity relative to the DBD+CU and typically developing groups.

During reward receipt, adolescents with DBDs exhibited increased cortical (eg, OFC) and subcortical (eg, NAcc) regional activation compared with typically developing youths. The DBD+CU group also showed greater activation in several regions than those in the typically developing (eg, amygdala) and DBD-only (eg, dorsal ACC) groups.

At the network level, the DBD-only group demonstrated decreased anticipatory reward activation relative to the typically developing and DBD+CU groups. On the other hand, those in the DBD+CU group had increased activation during reward receipt as opposed to typically developing youths.

“These findings advance our understanding of unique neuro-aetiologic pathways to DBDs and CU traits,” the investigators said.