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Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access originally published online on December 29, 2005
Schizophrenia Bulletin 2006 32(3):562-572; doi:10.1093/schbul/sbj036
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Neurobiological Correlates of Violent Behavior Among Persons With Schizophrenia

Kris Naudts1,2 and Sheilagh Hodgins2
2 Department of Forensic Mental Health Science, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London

1To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: k.naudts{at}iop.kcl.ac.uk

Men and women who develop schizophrenia are at increased risk, compared with the general population, to engage in violence toward others. The reasons for this robust finding remain obscure. We undertook a review of studies comparing neuropsychological test performance, neurological soft signs, and structural brain images of persons with schizophrenia with and without a history of violence. Our search identified 17 studies. The results are inconsistent and contradictory, mainly due to varying definitions of violence, differences in sample characteristics, and the use of diverse measures to tap the neurobiological correlates of violent behavior. The results suggest, however, that among men with schizophrenia, those who have displayed a stable pattern of antisocial and aggressive behavior since childhood, as compared with those with no such history, perform better on neuropsychological tests tapping specific executive functions and more poorly on assessments of orbitofrontal functions, show fewer neurological soft signs, and display larger reductions in volume of the amygdalae, more structural abnormalities of the orbitofrontal system, more abnormalities of white matter in the amygdala-orbitofrontal system, and smaller reductions in volumes of the hippocampus.

Keywords: Schizophrenia / violence / neuropsychology / neurological soft signs / structural brain imaging


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