People who experience rage attacks have smaller 'emotional brains'

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-01/e-pwe011216.php

Public Release: 12-Jan-2016
People who experience rage attacks have smaller 'emotional brains'
Reports new study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Elsevier

Neuroimaging studies suggest that frontolimbic regions of the brain, structures that regulate emotions, play an important role in the biology of aggressive behavior.

A new article published in the inaugural issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging reports that individuals with intermittent explosive disorder (IED) have significantly lower gray matter volume in these frontolimbic brain structures. In other words, these people have smaller "emotional brains."

"Intermittent explosive disorder is defined in DSM-5 as recurrent, problematic, impulsive aggression," explained Dr. Emil Coccaro, the article's lead author. "While more common than bipolar disorder and schizophrenia combined, many in the scientific and lay communities believe that impulsive aggression is simply 'bad behavior' that requires an 'attitude adjustment.' However, our data confirm that IED, as defined by DSM-5, is a brain disorder and not simply a disorder of 'personality.'" Dr. Coccaro is the E.C. Manning Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Coccaro and his colleagues also report a significant inverse correlation between measures of aggression and frontolimbic gray matter volume.

•••••