Pathological Personality Traits in Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDDs) are conditions that begin in the developmental period and cause significant impairments in personal, social, academic, and professional functioning. Concurrently, the understanding of personality has evolved from categorical models to dimensional approaches, which describe pathological traits as extreme variations of normal characteristics. These traits, organized into domains such as Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition, Psychoticism, and Anankastia, represent the core components of personality disorders. The interface between NDDs and pathological personality traits is an area of growing clinical interest, as comorbidity can exacerbate functional impairments and complicate diagnosis and treatment. However, the literature still has gaps, especially in systematic investigations covering multiple NDDs and in characterizing pathological personality profiles in clinical populations compared to non-clinical groups. This project aims to deepen this understanding by integrating neuropsychology and the psychopathology of personality.