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. 2017 Jul 18:11:414.
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00414. eCollection 2017.

Neuronal Correlates of Individual Differences in the Big Five Personality Traits: Evidences from Cortical Morphology and Functional Homogeneity

Ting Li  1 , Xu Yan  2 , Yuan Li  1 , Junjie Wang  3 , Qiang Li  1 , Hong Li  3 , Junfeng Li  1
Affiliations

Neuronal Correlates of Individual Differences in the Big Five Personality Traits: Evidences from Cortical Morphology and Functional Homogeneity

Ting Li et al. Front Neurosci. .

Abstract

There have been many neuroimaging studies of human personality traits, and it have already provided glimpse into the neurobiology of complex traits. And most of previous studies adopt voxel-based morphology (VBM) analysis to explore the brain-personality mechanism from two levels (vertex and regional based), the findings are mixed with great inconsistencies and the brain-personality relations are far from a full understanding. Here, we used a new method of surface-based morphology (SBM) analysis, which provides better alignment of cortical landmarks to generate about the associations between cortical morphology and the personality traits across 120 healthy individuals at both vertex and regional levels. While to further reveal local functional correlates of the morphology-personality relationships, we related surface-based functional homogeneity measures to the regions identified in the regional-based SBM correlation. Vertex-wise analysis revealed that people with high agreeableness exhibited larger areas in the left superior temporal gyrus. Based on regional parcellation we found that extroversion was negatively related with the volume of the left lateral occipito-temporal gyrus and agreeableness was negatively associated with the sulcus depth of the left superior parietal lobule. Moreover, increased regional homogeneity in the left lateral occipito-temporal gyrus is related to the scores of extroversion, and increased regional homogeneity in the left superior parietal lobule is related to the scores of agreeableness. These findings provide supporting evidence of a link between personality and brain structural mysteries with a method of SBM, and further suggest that local functional homogeneity of personality traits has neurobiological relevance that is likely based on anatomical substrates.

Keywords: cortical morphology; general linear model; personality traits; regional homogeneity; resting-state fMRI.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scatter diagram shows the age distribution of all the final subjects.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Statistical maps of cortical surfaces showing a significant correlation (FDR corrected) between agreeableness and area measured by surface-morphology analysis based on vertex-wise in fsaverage standard space. After controlling for age, sex, and ICV, a multiple regression analysis found that high agreeableness scores were associated with large areas in the superior temporal gyrus. Note that this scatter plot is presented only for the purpose of visualization.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Correlation maps of regional parcellation between personality traits and morphometric features (FDR corrected). After controlling for age, sex, and ICV, a multiple regression analysis found that extroversion was negatively related with the volume of the left lateral occipito-temporal gyrus (A) and agreeableness was negatively associated with the sulcus depth of the left superior parietal lobule (B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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