Mentalizing Impairments, Pathological Personality and Aggression in Violent Offenders

Impairments in mentalizing abilities are thought to account for the high aggressive tendencies observed among individuals with pathological personality. However, the question of whether mentalizing impairments may mediate the pathways by which pathological personality leads to aggression has not yet been answered. This study first investigated the psychometric proprieties of the Italian version of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ). Then, we tested the mediating role of mentalizing in the relationship between the three pathological personality domains and aggressiveness. The study was conducted on a sample of 327 participants including a group of violent offenders (n=118) and a group of community participants (n=209). All subjects fulfilled the RFQ, the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) and the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ). Partial Least Squares–Path Modelling with higher-order construct definition was used. Mentalizing capacities were shown to significantly mediate the pathways leading some pathological personality traits to aggression. Data supported the factorial structure of the RFQ found in the original validation study. Results also support the existence of a second-order variable, mentalizing, resulting from the convergence of hypomentalizing and hypermentalizing

Анализ использования земель республики Хакасия в рекреационных целях

AbstractMany neurodegenerative diseases, such as Morbus Parkinson, exhibit a gender-dependency showing a higher incidence in men than women. Most of the neurodegenerative disorders involve either causally or consequently a dysfunction of mitochondria. Therefore, neuronal mitochondria may demonstrate a gender-specificity with respect to structural and functional characteristics of these organelles during toxic and degenerative processes. The application of 6-OHDA (6-hydroxydopamine) in vitro and in vivo represents a well-accepted experimental model of Parkinson's disease causing Parkinsonian symptoms. Besides the known effects of 6-OHDA on mitochondria and neuronal survivability, we aimed to demonstrate that the mitochondrial neurotoxin affects the morphology and survival of primary dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic neurons in the mesencephalon in a gender-specific manner by influencing the transcription of mitochondrial genes, ATP and reactive oxygen species production. Our data suggest that cell death in response to 6-OHDA is primarily caused due to increased oxidative stress which is more pronounced in male than in female mesencephalic neurons