The Assertive Brain: Anterior Cingulate Phosphocreatine plus Creatine Levels Correlate With Self-Directedness in Healthy Adolescents

Abstract

Despite various advances in the study of the neurobiological underpinnings of personality traits, the specific neural correlates associated with character and temperament traits are not yet fully understood. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap by exploring the biochemical basis of personality, which is explored with the temperament and character inventory (TCI), during brain development in a sample of adolescents. Twenty-six healthy adolescents (aged between 13 and 21 years; 9 males and 18 females) with behavioral and emotional problems underwent a TCI evaluation and a 3T single-voxel proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MRS) acquisition of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Absolute metabolite levels were estimated using LCModel: significant correlations between metabolite levels and selective TCI scales were identified. Specifically, phosphocreatine plus creatine (PCr+Cre) significantly correlated with self-directedness, positively, and with a self-transcendence (ST), negatively, while glycerophosphocholine plus phosphocholine (GPC+PC) and myo-inositol negatively correlated with ST. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study reporting associations of brain metabolites with personality traits in adolescents. Therefore, our results represent a step forward for personality neuroscience within the study of biochemical systems and brain structures.

Transition Between Sensitive Delusion of Reference and Mood Disorder: A Case Report

“…Personality development is a complex phenomenon that is affected by multiple genetic and environmental factors (26)(27)(28)(29)(30). The traditional delineation of Kretschmer's Sensitive Delusion of Reference emphasizes as a core element, the development of persecutory delusions driven by a specific personality type, usually triggered by a key experience where the feeling of shame is activated, often facilitated by a particular sociocultural context (31).…”

Perspectives before incremental trans-disciplinary cross-validation of clinical self-evaluation tools and functional MRI in psychiatry: 10 years later

“…They are convenient, as long as the test-retest stability of the construct measures is established, and are usually performed in independent time slots from neuroimaging studies. Various correlations of such dimensions have been reported, e.g., harm avoidance and selfdirectedness with fMRI and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) (9)(10)(11). However, the visual stimuli employed in functional MRI are not derived from the inventory itself but represent visualizations designed for the imaging data acquisition supposedly related indirectly to the trait construct in question.…”