en Cognitive Neuroscience Cognitive Neuroscience Original Original <div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Introduction</strong>: Previous neuroimaging studies have rarely investigated hostility as a distinct cognitive-emotional dimension of aggression. Most research has focused on overall aggressive behavior without differentiating hostility from other behavioral components. Specifically, the neural correlates associated with hostility in adolescents diagnosed with externalizing disorders have not been thoroughly investigated. To fill this void, the current research focused on hostility&mdash; a fundamental psychological element of violence&mdash;and its neurofunctional foundations in adolescents.&nbsp;<br> <strong>Methods</strong>: This study examined resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) differences in adolescents with high and low hostility, focusing on brain networks related to emotion regulation, salience, and executive control using the Buss&ndash;Perry aggression questionnaire (BPAQ) scale. We utilized seed-to-Voxel and region of interest (ROI)-to-ROI functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) models to examine rsFC in two groups of adolescents: 14 with externalizing disorders and 13 typically developing controls.&nbsp;<br> <strong>Results</strong>: Seed-to-Voxel analysis showed greater rsFC in low-hostility adolescents within two clusters: Left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) (BA 9/46) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) (BA 10/11) compared to high-hostility peers. Both target regions represent top-down emotional processing and social-affective processing, respectively, providing evidence that the lower hostility group is more efficient at regulating aggressive impulses. ROI-to-ROI analysis revealed significantly reduced connectivity in high-hostility adolescents, particularly between the dlPFC and the amygdala, and between the frontal midline and the amygdala, indicating impaired emotion regulation. Lowered links were also found between dorsal attention and salience networks, visual-limbic regions, and between cerebellar and medial prefrontal areas.<br> <strong>Conclusion</strong>: These differences reinforce disrupted functioning of conceptually relevant executive and attentional networks, as well as affective and socioemotional networks in adolescents with increased hostility. We perceive these findings collectively as a neurobiological contrast between low and high hostility, and note that decreased connectivity of both the prefrontal and salience networks may represent targets for neurotherapeutic interventions to reduce aggression in children and adolescents with externalizing problems.</div> Externalizing disorders, Hostility, Adolescents, Frontal lobe, Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 39 52 http://bcn.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-324-6&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Parya Abravani Parya_abravani@yahoo.com 13700319475328460057436 13700319475328460057436 No Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. Mohammadreza Bigdeli bigdelimohammadreza@yahoo.com 13700319475328460057437 13700319475328460057437 Yes Faculty of Animal Sciences and Marine Biology, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. Aliasghar Sadabadi a_sadabadi@sbu.ac.ir 13700319475328460057438 13700319475328460057438 No Institute for Science and Technology Studies, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. Shahid Shateripour shahidshateri@jri.ac.ir 13700319475328460057439 13700319475328460057439 No Department of Criminology, Judiciary Research Institute, Tehran, Iran.