Antisocial behavior is associated with reduced frontoparietal network efficiency in youth.

Youth antisocial behavior (AB) is associated with deficits in socioemotional processing, reward and threat processing, and executive functioning. These deficits are thought to emerge from differences in neural structure, functioning, and connectivity, particularly within the default, salience, and frontoparietal networks. However, the relationship between AB and the organization of these networks remains unclear. To address this gap, the current study applied unweighted, undirected graph analyses to resting-state fMRI data in a cohort of 161 adolescents (95 female) enriched for exposure to poverty, a risk factor for AB. As prior work indicates that callous-unemotional (CU) traits may moderate the neurocognitive profile of youth AB, we examined CU traits as a moderator. Using multi-informant latent factors, AB was associated with less efficient frontoparietal network topology, a network associated with executive functioning. However, this effect was limited to youth at low or mean levels of CU traits, indicating these neural differences were specific to those high on AB, but not CU traits. Neither AB, CU traits, nor their interaction were significantly related to default or salience network topologies. Results suggest that AB, specifically, may be linked with shifts in the architecture of the frontoparietal network.