Table 1

Neuropsychological studies of frontal lobe function in aggressive and antisocial subjects

Reference	Subjects	Neuropsychological test measure	Results
Deckelet al 29		89 men, age 21–25, recruited from community		• WCST, COWT, PMT	• PMT VII Maze added significantly to prediction of ASPD
				• EEG

• Decrease in left versus right frontal EEG activation in ASPD
Rosse et al 30	14 male crack cocaine addicted inpatients with ASPD	WCST	• Low violence group made significantly more perseverative errors than high violence group
Giancola and Zeichner31	Laboratory aggression in community sample, 72 white men aged 18–32	SOP, CAT	• Increased aggression correlated with decreased FL test performance
Lau et al 32		Laboratory aggression and alcohol intoxication in community sample, 114 male social drinkers		SOP, CAT		• Increased intoxication correlated with increased aggression
						• Lowest 25% on FL tests significantly more aggressive
Giancola et al 33		Self reported aggression in 198 males aged 10–12 at risk for substance misuse, and controls; 2 year prospective follow up		PMT, vigilance task, forbidden toy task, motor restraint task, WISC-R block design		• Significantly lower EF scores in boys at risk for substance abuse
						• Low EF scores significantly predicted increased aggression
Giancolaet al 34		Case-control study of aggressive antisocial behaviour in 249 conduct disordered females, age 14–18, and controls		PMT, vigilance task, motor restraint task, SCWT, WISC-R/WAIS-R block design, picture arrangement and object assembly		• CD subjects had significantly lower EF scores
						• Low EF scores significantly correlated with aggression, even when controlling for ADHD
Foster et al 35		One year prospective study of aggression in 23 male forensic psychiatric inpatients		• SCWT, JLOT, SDMT, TONI, WCST, EPT	• Scores on SCWT, JLOT, and EPT only significantly predicted frequency, but not severity of aggression
				• Overt aggression scale
LaPierre et al 36		30 psychopathic male criminals compared with 30 non-psychopathic male criminals		• Visual go/no-go, PMT qualitative error score, WCST, mental rotation task	• Psychopathic subjects significantly impaired on visual go/no-go, PMT errors and olfactory identification
				• Modular smell identification test	• WCST and mental rotation no different from controls

WCST=Wisconsin card sorting test; COWT=controlled oral word fluency test; PMT=Porteus maze test; WISC-R=Wechsler intelligence scale for children-revised; WAIS-R=Wechsler adult intelligence scale-revised; FL=frontal lobe; EF=executive functions; SOP=self ordered pointing task; CAT=conditional associative learning task; SCWT=Stroop colour-word task; JLOT=judgment of line orientation test; SDMT=symbol digit modalities test; TONI=test of non-verbal intelligence; EPT=emotional perception test; ASPD=antisocial personality disorder; CD=conduct disorder.