Last week one of my kids discovered that the interaction between a hamer and a glass table leaf can lead to destruction. Don’t get me wrong, he is a great kid, but sometimes – for sure when he’s tired – he can be very impulsive. And he’s not alone. Researchers from the University of Murcia have now studied the changes in the brain that are associated with impulsiveness, a personality trait that causes difficulties in inhibiting a response in the face of a stimulus and leads to unplanned actions without considering the negative consequences.
From the press release:
A new study headed by researchers from the University of Murcia analyses whether the connectivity of an infant’s brain is related to children’s impulsiveness.
“Impulsiveness is a risk factor for the development of serious behavioral problems,” Luis J. Fuentes, the main author of the study, explains. “Among the children with a typical development, we can observe individual differences in their interaction with the environment.”
In his opinion, the experts asked a group of parents to respond to a series of questions related to their children’s impulsive behavior.
With their responses, the 24 children in the sample were classified according to their levels of impulsive behavior. Then, through neuroimaging techniques, the experts studied their patterns of brain connectivity. With this information, they analysed the patterns to see if they were related to the level of impulsiveness that the parents had noticed in their children.
“We can confirm that the greater the level of impulsiveness in the children, the greater the alteration in the connections between the posterior cingulate cortex and the right angular gyrus, which is also observed in people with antisocial behavior; and other cerebral areas that are usually activated when performing given cognitive tasks,” adds Fuentes.
For the authors, these results have two important implications. They affirm that “On the one hand, what the parents notice about their children’s behavior has a clear reflection in their cerebral connectivity patterns, and this is useful information for checking what is observed on a daily basis on a neuro-anatomical level.”
Furthermore, alterations in the connectivity between areas of the brain that were previously related with antisocial behavior have been identified in children with normal development.
“Said brain connectivity patterns can serve as biological indicators for predicting the risk of the appearance of behavioral problems and social adaptation difficulties,” concludes Fuentes.
Impulsiveness and violence
Impulsiveness is a trait of the basic personality that causes difficulties in inhibiting a response in the face of a stimulus and leads to unplanned actions without considering the negative consequences.
For many years, experts have associated high levels of impulsiveness with behavior problems. This impulsive behavior is characteristic of children with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, but also of those which display antisocial personality traits that, in extreme cases, can lead to violent behavior.
Abstract of the research (free access):
Impulsivity is a core personality trait forming part of normal behavior and contributing to adaptive functioning. However, in typically developing children, altered patterns of impulsivity constitute a risk factor for the development of behavioral problems. Since both pathological and non-pathological states are commonly characterized by continuous transitions, we used a correlative approach to investigate the potential link between personality and brain dynamics. We related brain functional connectivity of typically developing children, measured with magnetic resonance imaging at rest, with their impulsivity scores obtained from a questionnaire completed by their parents. We first looked for areas within the default mode network (DMN) whose functional connectivity might be modulated by trait impulsivity. Then, we calculated the functional connectivity among these regions and the rest of the brain in order to assess if impulsivity trait altered their relationships. We found two DMN clusters located at the posterior cingulate cortex and the right angular gyrus which were negatively correlated with impulsivity scores. The whole-brain correlation analysis revealed the classic network of correlating and anti-correlating areas with respect to the DMN. The impulsivity trait modulated such pattern showing that the canonical anti-phasic relation between DMN and action-related network was reduced in high impulsive children. These results represent the first evidence that the impulsivity, measured as personality trait assessed through parents’ report, exerts a modulatory influence over the functional connectivity of resting state brain networks in typically developing children. The present study goes further to connect developmental approaches, mainly based on data collected through the use of questionnaires, and behavioral neuroscience, interested in how differences in brain structure and functions reflect in differences in behavior.