Anger under control: neural correlates of frustration as a function of trait aggression

Abstract

Antisocial behavior and aggression are prominent symptoms in several psychiatric disorders including antisocial personality disorder. An established precursor to aggression is a frustrating event, which can elicit anger or exasperation, thereby prompting aggressive responses. While some studies have investigated the neural correlates of frustration and aggression, examination of their relation to trait aggression in healthy populations are rare. Based on a screening of 550 males, we formed two extreme groups, one including individuals reporting high (n=21) and one reporting low (n=18) trait aggression. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3T, all participants were put through a frustration task comprising unsolvable anagrams of German nouns. Despite similar behavioral performance, males with high trait aggression reported higher ratings of negative affect and anger after the frustration task. Moreover, they showed relatively decreased activation in the frontal brain regions and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) as well as relatively less amygdala activation in response to frustration. Our findings indicate distinct frontal and limbic processing mechanisms following frustration modulated by trait aggression. In response to a frustrating event, HA individuals show some of the personality characteristics and neural processing patterns observed in abnormally aggressive populations. Highlighting the impact of aggressive traits on the behavioral and neural responses to frustration in non-psychiatric extreme groups can facilitate further characterization of neural dysfunctions underlying psychiatric disorders that involve abnormal frustration processing and aggression.

Figure 1. Reported level of Negative Affect (PANAS) and Anger (ESR) by individuals with high trait aggression (HA) and low trait aggression (LA) before (T0) and after (T1) the anagram task; * significant at p<0.05.

Figure 2. Activation for the main effect of group and parameter estimates for the activation in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC, x=44, y=52, z=18) and left ventrolateral/ dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC/ dlPFC, x=-52, y=26, z=32), p<0.001, uncorr., k>20 voxel.

Figure 3. Group X condition interaction and parameter estimates for activation in the amygdala and the dACC of HA and LA.

dACC: F(1,74), x=-8, y=10, z=26; amygdala (laterobasal group): F(1,74), x=-22, y=-6, z=-12; threshold: p<0.001 uncorr., k>20 voxel.