Temperament & Character account for brain functional connectivity at rest: A diathesis-stress model of functional dysregulation in psychosis

Abstract

The human brain’s resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) provides stable trait-like measures of differences in the perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social functioning of individuals. The rsFC of the prefrontal cortex is hypothesized to mediate a person’s rational self-government, as is also measured by personality, so we tested whether its connectivity networks account for vulnerability to psychosis and related personality configurations. Young adults were recruited as outpatients or controls from the same communities around psychiatric clinics. Healthy controls (n = 30) and clinically stable outpatients with bipolar disorder (n = 35) or schizophrenia (n = 27) were diagnosed by structured interviews, and then were assessed with standardized protocols of the Human Connectome Project. Data-driven clustering identified five groups of patients with distinct patterns of rsFC regardless of diagnosis. These groups were distinguished by rsFC networks that regulate specific biopsychosocial aspects of psychosis: sensory hypersensitivity, negative emotional balance, impaired attentional control, avolition, and social mistrust. The rsFc group differences were validated by independent measures of white matter microstructure, personality, and clinical features not used to identify the subjects. We confirmed that each connectivity group was organized by differential collaborative interactions among six prefrontal and eight other automatically-coactivated networks. The temperament and character traits of the members of these groups strongly accounted for the differences in rsFC between groups, indicating that configurations of rsFC are internal representations of personality organization. These representations involve weakly self-regulated emotional drives of fear, irrational desire, and mistrust, which predispose to psychopathology. However, stable outpatients with different diagnoses (bipolar or schizophrenic psychoses) were highly similar in rsFC and personality. This supports a diathesis-stress model in which different complex adaptive systems regulate predisposition (which is similar in stable outpatients despite diagnosis) and stress-induced clinical dysfunction (which differs by diagnosis).

Charitable crowdfunding donation-intention estimation depending on emotional project images using fNIRS-based functional connectivity

“…The PFC is situated in the frontal lobe toward the front of the brain. Its primary role is to govern human emotions, such as cognitive control, encompassing attention, behavior, thoughts, and so on [ 12 ]. In line with this role, studying the brain activity of the PFC enables us to anticipate human behavioral donation patterns.…”

Three joint temperament-character configurations account for learning, personality and well-being: normative demographic findings in a representative national population

“…People in the emotional-unreliable network, who prominently express the system for associative conditioning, typically have a temperament profile featuring high novelty seeking and/or high harm avoidance and a character profile featuring low self-directedness and cooperativeness. Consequently, such individuals are expected to be emotionally reactive, driven by fear, desire and habits, and are generally unhealthy and susceptible to magical thinking and unrealistic social messaging ( Garcia et al, 2023 ; Zwir et al, 2023 ). Consistent with this, studies classifying participants into the three integrated temperament-character networks have found those in the emotional-unreliable network have lower than average engagement in school ( Moreira et al, 2021b ), a ‘dark’ sense of humor featuring high sarcasm and cynicism comic styles ( Moreira et al, 2022a ), higher than average psychological reactance ( Moreira et al, 2022b ), elevated negative affect and lower life satisfaction ( Moreira et al, 2023a ), and a higher probability of ill-being ( Zwir et al, 2021 ).…”