Adolescents with disruptive behavior disorder investigated using an optimized MR diffusion tensor imaging protocol.

Adolescents with disruptive behavior disorder (DBD) and controls were investigated using an optimized MR diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) protocol in order to assess any possible structural abnormalities associated with DBD. Thirty-six patients and 40 normal subjects were examined. The extracted diffusion fractional anisotropy (FA) results demonstrate that for the DBD patients there is significantly reduced FA in both the frontal and left temporal regions. The largest brain area with significantly reduced FA is located within the arcuate fasciculus, which has projections extending from the temporal lobe to the frontal lobe along the lateral ventricle, lateral to the tapetum. The reduced FA reflects directly a lower extent of myelination and less coherent fiber track structures in the fasciculus, which in turn may indicate communication weakness among the associated cortical areas. The detected white matter microstructural abnormality, therefore, may be related to the developmental deficits observed in the patient group.