title: Abnormal brain structure in youth who commit homicide.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Violence that leads to homicide results in an extreme financial and emotional burden on society. Juveniles who commit homicide are often tried in adult court and typically spend the majority of their lives in prison. Despite the enormous costs associated with homicidal behavior, there have been no serious neuroscientific studies examining youth who commit homicide.
  
  
  METHODS
  Here we use neuroimaging and voxel-based morphometry to examine brain gray matter in incarcerated male adolescents who committed homicide (n = 20) compared with incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide (n = 135). Two additional control groups were used to understand further the nature of gray matter differences: incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide matched on important demographic and psychometric variables (n = 20) and healthy participants from the community (n = 21).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Compared with incarcerated adolescents who did not commit homicide (n = 135), incarcerated homicide offenders had reduced gray matter volumes in the medial and lateral temporal lobes, including the hippocampus and posterior insula. Feature selection and support vector machine learning classified offenders into the homicide and non-homicide groups with 81% overall accuracy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results indicate that brain structural differences may help identify those at the highest risk for committing serious violent offenses.
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Cope
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University, P.O. Box 701, Garden City, NY 11530, USA.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ermer
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA.
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Gaudet
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
authors.forename: V R
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Steele
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Eckhardt
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Arbabshirani
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; Mendota Mental Health Institute, 301 Troy Dr., Madison, WI 53704, USA.
authors.forename: M F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Caldwell
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
authors.forename: V D
authors.initials: VD
authors.lastname: Calhoun
authors.affiliation: Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, 1101 Yale Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA ; University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
authors.forename: K A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Kiehl
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D006708:Homicide / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D060388:Support Vector Machine; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Gray matter volume; Incarcerated adolescents; Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); Pattern classifier; Support vector machine (SVM); Voxel-based morphometry (VBM)