Abstract
Objective: Neuropsychological evidence supports the Developmental Taxonomy Theory of Antisocial Behavior, suggesting that abnormal brain development distinguishes life-course-persistent antisocial behavior from adolescence-limited antisocial behavior. Recent neuroimaging work confirmed that prospectively-measured life-course-persistent antisocial behavior is associated with differences in cortical brain structure. Whether this extends to subcortical brain structures remains uninvestigated. Methods: This study compared subcortical grey-matter volumes between individuals characterized by life-course-persistent, adolescence-limited or low-level antisocial behavior. Participants were members of the Dunedin Study, a population-based birth cohort of 1037 individuals born in New Zealand between 1972-1973 and followed to age 45. 672 Study members previously defined as exhibiting life-course-persistent, adolescence-limited, or low-level antisocial behavior based on repeated assessments from ages 7-26 were included. Grey-matter volumes of 10 subcortical structures were compared across groups. Results: The life-course-persistent group (N=80;59% male) had lower volume of amygdala, brain stem, cerebellum, hippocampus, pallidum, thalamus, and ventral diencephalon compared to the low-antisocial group (N=441;47% male). Differences between the life-course-persistent and the adolescence-limited group (N=151;54% male) were comparable in effect-size to differences between the life-course persistent and low-antisocial group, but were not statistically significant due to less statistical power. Grey-matter volumes in the adolescence-limited group were near the norm in this population-representative cohort and similar to volumes in the low-antisocial group. Conclusions: Although this study cannot establish causal links between brain volume and antisocial behavior, it constitutes new biological evidence that all people with antisocial behavior are not the same, supporting a need for greater developmental and diagnostic precision in clinical, forensic, and policy-based interventions.