RT Journal Article
T1 Social mentalizing in male perpetrators of intimate partner violence against women is associated with resting-state functional connectivity of the Crus II
A1 Amaoui, Sofía
A1 Marín Morales, Agar
A1 Martín Pérez, Cristina
A1 Pérez García, Miguel
A1 Verdejo Román, Juan
AB Social mentalizing refers to the ability to understand the intentions, causes, emotions and beliefs of another person or the self and is crucial for interpersonal understanding. Disturbances in this process may lead to aggressive and violent behaviors. Literature has shown that male perpetrators convicted for intimate partner crime (IPVAW) present alterations in different measures related to social mentalizing, in particular, they present more irrational thoughts toward women and difficulties in emotional recognition and empathy processes. However, the brain mechanisms underlying this process are still unknown. The aim of this study is to examine the resting-state functional connectivity of the cerebellar Crus II area, as a core component of social mentalizing in male perpetrators, and to explore if this connectivity is associated with social mentalizing processes. Toachieve these objectives, we compared the resting-state connectivity of 25 men convicted for an IPVAW crime (male perpetrators) with 29 men convicted for other crimes (other offenders) and 28 men with no criminal records (non-offenders) using a seed-based whole brain analysis.  Subsequently, correlations were performed to explore the association between the significant connectivity networks and social mentalizing measures only in male perpetrators of IPVAW. Analyses showed that male perpetrators of IPVAW exhibit hyperconnectivity between Crus II and posterior areas of the default mode network, frontoparietal and limbic areas compared to otheroffenders and non-offenders. In addition, the greater connectivity found between the Crus II and the posterior default mode network was related to a greater number of distorted thoughts about women and less affective empathy in male perpetrators of IPVAW. These results show that connectivity between the cerebellum and the default mode network may underlie the social processes that are at the basis of intimate partner violence perpetration.
PB Elsevier
SN 0022-3956
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/21897
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/21897
LA eng
NO Amaoui, S., Marín-Morales, A., Martín-Pérez, C., Pérez-García, M., & Verdejo-Román, J. (2022). Social mentalizing in male perpetrators of intimate partner violence against women is associated with resting-state functional connectivity of the Crus II. In Journal of Psychiatric Research (Vol. 150, pp. 264–271). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2022.03.044
NO We acknowledge the support of the General Secretary of Penitentiary Institutions, Ministerio del Interior, Spain. We thank Adela Ruz Fernández and Clotilde Berzosa Saez from the Center for Social Insertion “Matilde Cantos Fernández”, (Granada, Spain), and the “Neuropsychology and Psychoneuroimmunology applied to children, adults and elderly.” (PNinsula-CTS-581) of the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC).
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 31 may 2026