Neuroticism appears to be a factor that triggers social aggression, but the relationship between neuroticism and social aggression and its underlying mechanisms is unclear. Questionnaire data from 942 college students ranging in age from 17 to 24 (Mage = 20.33, SD = 1.03) were analysed to assess whether depression symptoms mediated the relationship between neuroticism and social aggression, and to test a moderating effect of perceived social support. Results showed that neuroticism positively predicted social aggression and this association was mediated by depression symptoms. Moderation was found for the association between neuroticism and depression symptoms, as well as between neuroticism and social aggression, and that neuroticism had a stronger predictive effect on depression symptoms and social aggression under low compared to high perceived social support. These findings may inform prevention and intervention efforts to reduce social aggression.

The Ultimatum Game is an effective tool for understanding how social decision-making is influenced by emotions in both research and clinical settings. Previous findings have shown that the Ultimatum Game can evoke negative emotions, especially anger and aggression. In a sample of non-clinical adults (N = 143) we evaluated the sensitivity of an anger-infused version of the Ultimatum Game to individual differences in anger and irritability. Findings showed significant relationships between anger and aggressive behaviors in the Ultimatum game, but no association between irritability and aggressive behavior were observed. This indicates that the anger-infused Ultimatum Game is a promising method for studying individual differences in trait anger and anger expression. However, the relationship between decision-making in the anger-infused Ultimatum Game and irritability is less straight forward and needs further investigation. Therefore, when studying the behavioral responses of irritability, it would be beneficial to capture other behaviors beyond aggressive responses.

UNASSIGNED: Violence is more prevalent in patients with psychotic disorders compared to the general population. Hence, adequate violence risk assessment is of high clinical importance. Impaired insight is suggested as a risk factor for violence in psychosis, but studies have yielded conflicting results. We hypothesized that impaired insight was associated with a history of severe violence in patients with psychotic disorders.
UNASSIGNED: Clinical insight was assessed both using the Birchwood Insight Scale (BIS) and the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS) item G12 (lack of judgment and insight). The degree of impaired clinical insight was compared between psychosis patients with (N = 51) and without (N = 178) a history of severe violence. Multiple linear regression analyses were performed to investigate the effects of putative confounders.
UNASSIGNED: We found that a history of severe violence was significantly associated with lower insight in one of the three BIS components (the relabeling of symptoms) (P = .03, R2 = 0.02) and the PANSS item G12 (P = .03, R2 = 0.02) also after controlling for putative confounders.
UNASSIGNED: The results suggest there is an association between impaired insight and severe violence in psychosis patients. We propose that examination of insight by validated instruments comprising different components may add useful information to clinical violence risk assessment in psychosis patients.

UNASSIGNED: Psychopathic traits play an important role in schizophrenia, particularly for violent behavior. There have been very few functional imaging studies (fMRI) examining the impact of brain dysfunction on psychopathic traits in schizophrenia. Our goal was to evaluate neural abnormalities underlying these traits through fMRI in violent subjects with schizophrenia (VS) and in 3 comparison groups: healthy controls (HC), nonviolent patients (NV), and nonpsychotic violent subjects (NPV).
UNASSIGNED: fMRI imaging was used to measure blood-oxygen-level-dependent activation in 95 subjects while they performed a Go/NoGo task: 26 VS, 25 NPV, 26 HC, and 18 NVS. Psychopathy was evaluated through the 2 factors of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL:SV). The subjects were also evaluated for psychiatric symptoms and for educational achievement.
UNASSIGNED: Hypoactivation of brain areas involved in response inhibition was related to the severity of psychopathic traits in the violent patients with schizophrenia. These areas included frontal regions, cingulate cortex, insula, precuneus, and basal ganglia. This association was very strong for the first PCL:SV factor, the affective-interpersonal traits, and moderate for the second PCL:SV factor, the antisocial-impulsive traits. The latter traits were also linked to poor educational achievement.
UNASSIGNED: The 2 psychopathic factors have different antecedents and are dissociable at the neural level in schizophrenia. Brain dysfunction is more strongly associated with the affective-interpersonal traits while the antisocial traits are associated with various factors. This has important implications for the conceptualization and treatment of violence in patients with schizophrenia.

Accumulating evidence suggests that aggression and rule-breaking may have distinct origins. However, grouping these heterogeneous behaviors into a single dimension labelled Conduct Problems (CP) has become the norm rather than the exception. Yet, the neurobiological features that differentiate aggression and rule-breaking remain largely unexplored. Using a large sample of children and adolescents (n = 1360, 6-18 years old), we examined the common and specific brain activity between CP, aggression, and rule-breaking behaviors. Analyses were conducted using fMRI resting-state data from a 10-minute session to explore the correlations between low frequency fluctuations and both broad and fine-grained CP dimensions. The broad CP dimension was associated with deficits in the precentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and tempo-parietal junction. However, only the superior temporal gyrus was shared between aggression and rule-breaking. Activity of the precentral gyrus was mainly associated with rule-breaking, and the temporo-parietal cortex with aggression. More importantly, voxel-wise analyses on fine-grained dimensions revealed additional specific effects that were initially obscured when using a broad CP dimension. Finally, we showed that the findings specific to aggression and rule-breaking may be related to distinct brain networks and mental functions, especially ventral attention/sensorimotor processes and default mode network/social cognitions, respectively. The current study highlights that aggression and rule-breaking may be related to distinct local and distributed neurobiological markers. Overall, using fine-grained dimensions may provide a clearer picture of the role of neurobiological correlates in CP and their invariance across measurement levels. We advocate for adopting a more thorough examination of the lumping/splitting effect across neuroimaging studies on CP.

Indirect aggression is commonly used in adulthood, but most researchers have focused on this behavior in romantic relationships or from an intrasexual competition perspective. Therefore, we aimed to understand the social characteristics and mental health correlates of indirect aggression by combining perspectives from developmental psychopathology and evolutionary psychology. We examined: (1) whether social characteristics (social comparison, hypercompetitiveness) contributed to indirect aggression (perpetration, victimization) and (2) whether there were indirect effects from indirect aggression (perpetration, victimization) to mental health difficulties through loneliness. In a cross-sectional sample of 475 young adults (57.7% women, 51.6% White, Mage = 20.2, SDage = 2.18), path analyses revealed that social comparison predicted indirect aggression victimization, which indirectly predicted mental health difficulties (depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms) through loneliness. In contrast, indirect aggression perpetration was only predicted by hypercompetitiveness. The findings highlight that reframing cognitions associated with social comparison could help prevent indirect aggression and mental health difficulties among young people.

Recent research has unveiled conflicting evidence regarding the link between aggression and the gut microbiome. Here, we compared behavior profiles of control, germ-free (GF) and antibiotic-treated mice, as well as re-colonized GF mice to understand the impact of gut microbiome on aggression using the resident-intruder paradigm. Our findings revealed a link between gut microbiome depletion and higher aggression, accompanied by notable changes in urine metabolite profiles and brain gene expression. Our study extends beyond classical murine models to humanized mice to reveal the clinical relevance of early-life antibiotic use on aggression. Fecal microbiome transplant from infants exposed to antibiotics in early life (and sampled one month later) into mice led to increased aggression compared to mice receiving transplants from unexposed infants. This study sheds light on the role of the gut microbiome in modulating aggression and highlights its potential avenues of action, offering insights for development of therapeutic strategies for aggression-related disorders.

Aggression in farm animals affects welfare. Although one-on-one aggression was studied, group-on-individual aggression remains unresolved. This study aimed to examine how herd establishment times and structures influence aggression intensity (AI) of herds towards unfamiliar pigs. Six groups of pigs were established, with a new pig added every three days. AI was measured by skin lesion severity on the new pigs. A parabolic model based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and conjoint analysis identified factors influencing AI. Results show AI was not significantly affected by herd size but was significantly influenced by the number of pens (p < 0.01). AI showed a significant association with elevated time (T) since the establishment of the herd in six pig herds (Kendall\'s tau-τ = 0.976, p < 0.001). The effect of T on the AI became stronger as T increased, which was consistently validated in six pig herds. Furthermore, the interaction effect indicates a significant difference in AI between herds formed with two pens and those with more than two pens when T ≤ 12 (p < 0.05). However, as T increased beyond 12, the number of pens used to form the herd did not significantly affect AI. These findings highlight the complex interactions between herd establishment time and structural composition in shaping aggression intensity towards unfamiliar pigs.

暂无摘要。

The mental health crisis in children and adolescents presents a unique challenge for pediatric providers in the inpatient setting. Patients are presenting to the emergency department in acute psychiatric crises, but the increased need for behavioral health services is met with an already limited supply of behavioral health services and facilities. As such, these patients are hospitalized on acute care floors, which can serve to exacerbate symptoms of aggression regardless of cause and complicates treatment and harm prevention strategies. We present a comprehensive management approach to the acutely agitated pediatric patient with aggressive behaviors, including prevention of symptoms in patients with risk factors; nonpharmacological approaches to de-escalation, including the use of restraint; and common oral and parenteral psychopharmacological agents. Such strategies are considered from a medical, ethical, and legal standpoint with the goal of maintaining safety and minimizing harm to patients, families, and staff. [Pediatr Ann. 2024;53(8):e293-e298.].