CONCLUSION: CPs were associated with subtle, yet widespread, alterations in brain structure. Findings overlapped with differences observed in categorically-measured conduct disorder, but novel associations with cortical thickness were identified. This provides further evidence that neuroanatomical differences are not limited to youths with clinically-elevated CPs. Our findings have potential implications for neurocognitive models of CPs as they extend beyond the regions highlighted in these...

Conduct disorder (CD) is the leading global cause of mental health burden in children and adolescents and has recently been hypothesized to be a neurodevelopmental disorder. Although prior research has identified neuroanatomical differences associated with CD, it remains unclear whether these differences reflect atypical brain development. Here, we investigated the difference between an individual's brain age and chronological age as a proxy for variations in brain maturation. Using a pretrained...

CONCLUSIONS: We provide evidence that anxiety and maltreatment cannot be used interchangeably to identify youth with primary versus secondary CU traits. Anxiey yielded the best fitting and most theoretically interpretable classifications across both sexes. Our results signify the need for researchers and clinicians to adopt a unified approach to defining primary and secondary subgroups of CU traits using anxiety in both sexes.

Childhood maltreatment is a key risk factor for conduct disorder (CD), and the "ecophenotype hypothesis" suggests that maltreatment-related versus non-maltreatment-related CD are neurobiologically distinct. This may explain inconsistent findings in previous structural connectivity studies of CD. We tested this hypothesis by comparing youth with CD with (CD/+) versus without (CD/-) childhood physical or sexual abuse in white-matter microstructure. Diffusion tensor imaging data were collected from...

CONCLUSIONS: The findings for males support an influential neurocognitive model of CD. However, the association between CU traits and brain response to facial expressions differed in females and males with CD, suggesting distinct pathophysiological processes.