Conduct disorder (CD) may be associated with problems in understanding the thoughts and intentions of others. These abilities include mentalizing skills and are important for successful social interactions. Previous neuroimaging studies have that mentalizing is consistently associated with activation of a set of specific brain regions.

To identify potential abnormalities of the social brain during mentalizing in adolescents suffering from CD.

A group of 14 adolescents with CD and a sex- and age-matched group of 16 adolescents without mental disorders were scanned with functional MRI during watching simple animations of two triangles that moved either randomly or in way that implied intentional movements and interactions (Theory of Mind (ToM) animations). SPM8 was used for data preprocessing and statistical analysis,

In both groups, ToM animations led to increased activation in core regions of the social brain (temporal, temporoparietal, occipitotemporal and medial frontal regions). In the right temporoparietal cortex, these increased activation in response to ToM animations were reduced in the CD group compared to the control group.

The right temporoparietal cortex a core region of the mentalizing brain showed reduced activation in adolescents with CD. This result suggests that CD is associated with a dysfucntion in the neural processing of social information