Neuroanatomical correlates of personality in the elderly

Abstract

Extraversion and neuroticism are two important and frequently studied dimensions of human personality. They describe individual differences in emotional responding that are quite stable across the adult lifespan. Neuroimaging research has begun to provide evidence that neuroticism and extraversion have specific neuroanatomical correlates within the cerebral cortex and amygdala of young adults. However, these brain areas undergo alterations in size with aging, which may influence the nature of these personality factor-brain structure associations in the elderly. One study in the elderly demonstrated associations between perisylvian cortex structure and measures of self transcendence (Kaasinen et al., 2005), but the neuroanatomical correlates of extraversion and neuroticism, or other measures of the Five Factor Model of personality have not been explored. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the structural correlates of neuroticism and extraversion in healthy elderly subjects (n=29) using neuroanatomic measures of the cerebral cortex and amygdala. We observed that the thickness of specific lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions, but not amygdala volume, correlates with measures of extraversion and neuroticism. The results suggest differences in the regional neuroanatomic correlates of specific personality traits with aging. We speculate that this relates to the influences of age-related structural changes in the PFC.

On the relationship between fluid intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure

“…With this technique cortical segmentation and thickness measures were obtained in every individual without squeezing the individual brain into the standard space. Note that a similar approach was used with comparable sample size in recent studies (Dickerson et al, 2008;Gold et al, 2005;Wright, Feczko, Dickerson, & Williams, 2007). While most studies report a positive relation of intelligence and cortical thickness, we also found a negative relation between intelligence and thickness of the right inferior parietal lobe.…”

Fiber connectivity between the striatum and cortical and subcortical regions is associated with temperaments in Chinese males

“…Second, the current study was conducted with young college males with a narrow age range to avoid the confounding effect of age. Because aging of the brain might affect the neurobiological correlates of personality traits (Wright et al, 2007), future studies should include samples of a broader age range. Finally, several studies have found genetic effects, gene × brain interactions, and even gender × gene × brain three-way interactions for RD, NS, and HA (Buckholtz et al, 2008 …”

Detection of cortical thickness correlates of cognitive performance: Reliability across MRI scan sessions, scanners, and field strengths

“…Using such tools, relationships have been identified between regional cortical thickness and intelligence quotient (Narr et al, 2006;Shaw et al, 2006), personality measures (Wright et al, 2006;Wright et al, 2007), and memory (Walhovd et al, 2006). Although the validation of MRI-derived cortical thickness measurements has been performed against manual measurements derived from both in vivo and post-mortem MRI brain scans (Rosas et al, 2002b;Kuperberg et al, 2003a;Salat et al, 2004), the reliability of measures of this fundamental morphometric property of the brain has received relatively little systematic investigation (Fischl and Dale, 2000;Rosas et al, 2002a;Kuperberg et al, 2003b;Sowell et al, 2004;Lerch and Evans, 2005;Han et al, 2006).…”