Publications by authors named "Leah M Lozier"
Article Synopsis
- - The study investigates the link between callous unemotional (CU) traits in youths and the volume of the amygdala, which is believed to be dysfunctional in individuals with these traits and associated externalizing behaviors.
- - Assessing 148 youths through specific psychological inventories and brain imaging, researchers found that CU traits correlate with higher externalizing behaviors and reduced amygdala volume, primarily influenced by the callous and uncaring aspects of CU traits.
- - The results suggest that these callous-uncaring traits could mediate the connection between smaller amygdala volume and the severity of externalizing behaviors, highlighting the role of amygdala development in understanding conduct problems in youths.
Costly altruism benefitting a stranger is a rare but evolutionarily conserved phenomenon. This behaviour may be supported by limbic and midbrain circuitry that supports mammalian caregiving. In rodents, reciprocal connections between the amygdala and the midbrain periaqueductal grey (PAG) are critical for generating protective responses toward vulnerable and distressed offspring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCallous-unemotional (CU) traits characterize a subgroup of youths with conduct problems who exhibit low empathy, fearlessness, and elevated externalizing behaviors. The current study examines the role of aberrant amygdala activity and functional connectivity during a socioemotional judgment task in youths with CU traits, and links these deficits to externalizing behaviors. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare neural responses in 18 healthy youths and 30 youths with conduct problems and varying levels of CU traits as they evaluated the acceptability of causing another person to experience each of several emotions, including fear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAutism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterized by social impairments, including inappropriate responses to affective stimuli and nonverbal cues, which may extend to poor face-emotion recognition. However, the results of empirical studies of face-emotion recognition in individuals with ASD have yielded inconsistent findings that occlude understanding the role of face-emotion recognition deficits in the development of ASD. The goal of this meta-analysis was to address three as-yet unanswered questions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Among youths with conduct problems, callous-unemotional (CU) traits are known to be an important determinant of symptom severity, prognosis, and treatment responsiveness. But positive correlations between conduct problems and CU traits result in suppressor effects that may mask important neurobiological distinctions among subgroups of children with conduct problems.
Objective: To assess the unique neurobiological covariates of CU traits and externalizing behaviors in youths with conduct problems and determine whether neural dysfunction linked to CU traits mediates the link between callousness and proactive aggression.