Hyperresponsivity to threat stimuli in domestic violence offenders: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

While spouse abuse research has almost exclusively adopted a social perspective, an increasing body of imaging research is documenting neural contributions to violence.

To test the hypothesis that wife batterers are hyperresponsive to threatening stimuli, echo-planar functional magnetic resonance imaging was employed to assess brain function of 10 male batterers and 13 male matched controls during viewing of 4 types of visual stimuli: neutral, positive affect, aggressive-threat, and aggression against women. The study was conducted from September 2005 to August 2006.

Compared to controls, batterers showed significantly higher neural hyperresponsivity to the threat stimuli in the hippocampus, fusiform gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus, thalamus, and occipital cortex (p < .001). To a lesser extent, they also showed increased activation to the aggression against women stimuli, particularly in the precuneus bilaterally (p < .001), and also increased activation to positive affect stimuli in right hemisphere orbitofrontal, anterior cingulate, and inferior parietal cortical regions (p < .001).

Findings indicate an affect-processing abnormality in wife batterers and suggest that hypersensitivity to mildly threatening affective provocations by their spouses may represent a neurobiological predisposition to spouse abuse in some men.