From Motives to Mechanisms: Understanding Aggression in Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder

This webinar features two expert presentations exploring aggression in psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. Each presentation will be followed by an opportunity for audience interaction, allowing for questions and discussion with the speakers.

Presenter 1: Prof. dr. Jill Lobbestael (Maastricht University)
Title: Motivations for Aggression in Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorders

Abstract: People can hold different motivations to aggress; removing threats (reactive aggression), obtaining instrumental goals (proactive aggression), or experiencing pleasure in seeing others suffer (sadistic aggression). Prof. dr. Lobbestael will present empirical work on how different personality disorders relate to reactive versus proactive aggression. Prof. dr. Lobbestael will also present two studies where they looked at how psychopathy, as well as its different subfactors, relate to sadistic pleasure. The studies use a mix-method approach, including interviews, questionnaires, and experimental methods likes vignettes, and human- and animal-directed behavioral measures of aggression.

Presenter 2: Dr. Julia Griem (King’s College London)   
Title: Neurobiological Underpinnings of Antisocial Personality Disorder and Psychopathy

Abstract: In this presentation, Dr. Griem will discuss some key existing research from the literature as well as research they have done in the Forensic Research Lab of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (King’s College London). The goal is to share with you the current understanding about the neurobiological mechanisms that underpin antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy (and its developmental precursors of conduct disorder and callous-unemotional traits). Dr. Griem will focus on a range of neuroimaging methods, including: (1) structural MRI to investigate grey matter structure, (2) diffusion MRI, to investigate white matter structure, (3) task-based and resting-state fMRI, to measure brain activation patterns during behaviour and at baseline, and (4) additional more niche methods such as arterial spin labelling and spectroscopy. Dr. Griem will briefly touch on research they have done to investigate the pharmacological ‘shiftability’ of neurobiological mechanisms in this population, focusing on the use of intranasal oxytocin. Dr. Griem hopes to convey that despite personality disorders sometimes being considered as of a less ‘biological psychiatry’ phenomenon (when compared to e.g., schizophrenia), there are nevertheless neurobiological hallmarks that characterize it, which may offer treatment targets in a disorder where treatment is very scarce.