In This Issue

Women with well-documented premenstrual dysphoric disorder had greater task-related activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex than healthy women, regardless of hormone state. Baller et al. (CME, p. 305) controlled hormone conditions through ovarian suppression followed by separate additions of estradiol and progesterone. Greater overactivation of the patients’ dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in all three hormonal states correlated with worse baseline functioning and premenstrual symptoms and with earlier age at onset. In an editorial, Epperson (p. 248) proposes that premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a trait sensitivity made manifest by the premenstrual hormonal state.

Reinforcement for decisions has different effects on the brains of adolescents with conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder and the brains of healthy youths. White et al. (p. 315) used participants’ learning curves to calculate their valuations of choices in a decision-making task. Compared to the healthy adolescents, those with disruptive behavior disorders showed less influence of expected value in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and left anterior insular cortex during decision making. During feedback, the healthy youths showed greater caudate responses to positive than to negative outcomes, but the behavior disorders group had caudate increases when receiving negative feedback. Editorialists Viding and Seara-Cardoso (p. 253) point out that the familial clustering of disruptive behavior disorders could mean that some disruptive children inherit a biological vulnerability to make poor choices and also receive impaired parental feedback, both of which contribute to their dysfunction.