Abstract

Although the number of females exhibiting serious aggressive behaviours is growing, the majority of studies on biomarkers, neurocognitive phenotypes, and therapeutic treatment of conduct disorder (CD) have focused on male subjects only, despite strong evidence for a differential aetiology and neurobiology of female CD. As a consequence, female CD remains a highly neglected research area resulting in a significant gap of knowledge on neurobiological mechanisms underlying the development of the disorder in females leading to an absence of sex-specific targets for prevention and intervention. In this state-of the art lecture, we will present an overview on the current state of research on CD in adolescent females, focussing on emotion processing and its underlying neurobiology. The FemNAT-CD consortium addresses these issues in a comprehensive way by studying psychopathology, cognitive, neuroendocrine, neurophysiological, epigenetic and genetic biomarkers.