A Research On The Correlation Between Brain Structure And Function With Eysenck's Personality Traits In College Students

Background Eysenck's approach to personality research was groundbreaking.He combined psychological testing,behavioral and neurobiological perspectives to explore the biological basis of the major dimensions of personality.Extraversion and Neuroticism were two of the most important dimensions of Eysenck personality traits.Extraversion was used to measure the extroversion and Neuroticism was used to measure the emotional stability.With the continuous development of imaging technology,there were more and more studies on the basis of personality neurobiology by using structural MRI and functional MRI.Voxel-based Morphometry was the most widely used technique for sMRI.In fMRI,resting-state fMRI was widely used because its experimental design were simple and data collection were stable.At present,many studies showed that personality may be related to brain regions involved in emotional regulation and emotional processing,but the results were not consistent.At the same time,these studies mostly analyzed the single aspect of structure or function.Objective To explore the relationship between E and N with brain structure by using Voxel-based Morphometry methods.Use the rs-fMRI to explore the relationship between E and N with brain function.Methods 100 healthy adults underwent the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short Scale for Chinese(EPQ-RSC),conventional MRI to excluding intracranial organic disease,T1 thin-layer scan to high resolution three-dimensional brain structuralimages,and BOLD scan to brain functional images.The brain structure and function analyzed with the grey matter volume(GMV),regional homogeneity(ReHo)and amplitude of low frequency fluctuations(ALFF).The VBM8 toolbox was used to obtain relevant brain regions.The coordinates of each region were obtained by the Montreal Neuroscience Institute(MNI).The correlation of GMV,ReHo and ALFF with E and N scores was analyzed by using Pearson correlation.Sex,age,and total intracranial volume were used as external regressors to control their effects on both brain structure and function with personality.Results E scores were negatively correlated with N scores(r =-0.56,P <0.05).E scores were negatively correlated with GMV of the right middle temporal gyrus.The E scores were positively correlated with ReHo of the left precentral gyrus.E scores and ALFF,N scores and GMV no significant correlation.The brain regions of N scores positively related to ReHo : the right angular gyrus,the right frontal_mid gyrus.The brain regions of N scores positively related to ALFF : the right frontal_sup_orb gyrus,the right angular gyrus,the left frontal_inf_oper gyrus and the left supp_motor_area.Conclusion The GMV,ReHo and ALFF are related to the personality traits.The differences of personality traits are based on the difference of individual brain structure and function.