Oxytocin and callous-unemotional traits: towards a social-cognitive approach to forensic analysis

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits in children and adolescents are an important risk factor for forensic behaviors in youth and in adulthood. There is a strong biologic basis in CU traits, offering the possibility to design biological interventions to address this risk factor. This paper advances the hypothesis that the administration of exogenous oxytocin is a biological intervention worthy of further investigation to address CU traits and moderate future risk factors for forensic behaviors. The evidence for this assertion rests in the empiric evidence that social cognitive deficits play a major role in child and adolescent CU traits and psychopathy. Simultaneously, emerging evidence suggests that youth with CU traits have defined neuroendocrinological correlates within the oxytocin system. A review of the normal neurohormonal physiology of this system is presented to provide a groundwork for the delineation of these correlates. That deficits in this system are found in alternate psychopathologies that present with deficits in social cognition serves as the basis for the hypothesis that these deficits may play a key role in the development and manifestation of CU traits. Their correction through psychopharmacologic and alternate means may provide a future route to addressing a central area of adolescent forensic psychiatry.