The longitudinal study Crime in the Modern City (CrimoC) examined sociological and criminological determinants of violent delinquency across multiple waves in a 25-year prospective cohort. Based on these data, participants were classified into three offender trajectories: repeated, occasional, and non-violent offenders.

The present project extends the CrimoC study by re-assessing participants in adulthood (fourth decade of life) and addresses two central research questions: (1) To what extent are social and socio-psychological factors in adolescence and early adulthood associated with adult neurobiological, neuropsychological, and psychopathological outcomes in individuals with repeated violent offending compared to occasional and non-violent individuals? (2) To what extent do current neurobiological, neuropsychological, and psychopathological characteristics differentiate individuals with a history of repeated violent offending from those with occasional or no violent offending?

A primary focus lies on a multi-level assessment of aggression, including self-reported trait aggression (AQ, RPQ), behavioral aggression assessed with the Taylor Aggression Paradigm during functional MRI, and clinician-rated state aggression (OAS-M). The current sample comprises 70 adults, including 42 individuals with a history of violent offending (repeated or occasional trajectories) and 28 non-violent controls.

Preliminary findings from this ongoing study will be presented, providing novel insights into the neurobehavioral mechanisms of aggression in a longitudinally characterized violent offender sample.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterised by heightened emotional reactivity and interpersonal sensitivity, both of which may influence social decision-making. Although responses to unfairness appear altered in BPD, it remains unclear whether acute threat changes fairness-related decisions in this group. To investigate this, we combined a modified anger-infused Ultimatum Game with a threat-of-shock manipulation, enabling the separation of emotional reactivity from behavioural decision-making under safe and threat conditions.

Ninety participants (30 with BPD, 60 healthy controls) completed the task. They responded to fair, medium, and unfair monetary offers paired with neutral or provocative messages across alternating safe and threat blocks. Emotional states were assessed before and after the task, and trait anger was measured using the State–Trait Anger Expression Inventory. Behavioural and affective responses were analysed using mixed-design analyses of variance.

Rejection rates increased significantly as offer fairness decreased, confirming that the task reliably captured sensitivity to inequity and induced anger. Participants with BPD reported higher levels of anger, fear, and sadness than healthy controls, indicating greater emotional reactivity. By contrast, fairness-based decision-making remained largely stable: neither diagnostic group nor threat condition produced robust changes in rejection behaviour, and small effects in the full sample disappeared after excluding participants with near-ceiling acceptance rates. Trait anger was positively associated with post-task anger, supporting the validity of the paradigm.

These findings suggest a dissociation in BPD between heightened emotional reactivity and largely preserved fairness-driven decision-making, even under acute threat.

Aggressive behavior is closely linked to deficits in inhibitory control and dysfunctional prefrontal regulation. Non-invasive brain stimulation, particularly transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), has emerged as a promising approach to modulate these processes. Across three studies, we investigated how prefrontal stimulation influences aggression and its underlying mechanisms, considering individual and methodological factors.

First, we demonstrate that anodal tDCS targeting the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex enhances inhibitory control and attenuates the escalation of reactive aggression in substance-dependent individuals, while showing minimal effects in healthy controls. Second, we provide evidence that genetic variability critically moderates stimulation effects: specifically, the COMT Val158Met polymorphism, which regulates prefrontal dopamine availability, determines the direction of behavioral responses to tDCS. While met-allele homozygotes showed a reduction in aggressive behavior following anodal stimulation, val-allele carriers exhibited an increase in aggression under the same protocol. These opposing effects emphasize that identical neuromodulation protocols can produce different effects depending on individual predispositions. Third, using high-definition tDCS with increased spatial precision, we show that anodal stimulation of the right inferior frontal gyrus does not directly reduce aggression but decreases sensitivity to provocation in healthy individuals as compared to sham stimulation.

Taken together, these findings suggest that prefrontal neuromodulation does not uniformly suppress aggression but rather shapes context-dependent regulatory processes. Critically, stimulation effects depend on baseline characteristics, genetic factors, and stimulation focality. This work underscores the need for personalized neuromodulation approaches and advances our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying aggression control.

In this multicenter, confirmatory, cluster randomized-controlled clinical-trial (RCT) for

aggression-proned patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), a Mechanism-Based

Anti-Aggression Psychotherapy (MAAP) in the group setting, is tested for efficacy against a

non-specific supportive psychotherapy (NSSP) program focusing on non-specific general

factors of psychotherapy. MAAP consists of multifaceted, evidence-based treatment

elements adapted from other sophisticated treatment programs such as Dialectical Behavior

Therapy and Mentalization-Based Treatment. Elements are selected in the way to target the

specific biobehavioural mechanisms underlying outward-directed aggression in BPD which

turned out to be change mechanisms in a precursory proof-of-concept study. Outcomes are

assessed at baseline, immediately, and 4, 12, 20, and 24 weeks post-treatment using

ecological momentary assessment, clinical interviews, questionnaires, and online-tasks. The

study design as well as first results from the confirmatory trial will be presented.