Abstract
This study examines the blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activation of the brain associated with the four distinctive thinking styles associated with the four personality orientations of the Gountas Personality Orientations (GPO) survey: Emotion/Feeling-Action, Material/Pragmatic, Intuitive/Imaginative, and Thinking/Logical. The theoretical postulation is that each of the four personality orientations has a dominant (primary) thinking style and a shadow (secondary) thinking style/trait. The participants (N = 40) were initially surveyed to determine their dominant (primary) and secondary thinking styles. Based on participant responses, equal numbers of each dominant thinking style were selected for neuroimaging using a unique fMRI cognitive activation paradigm. The neuroimaging data support the general theoretical hypothesis of the existence of four different BOLD activation patterns, associated with each of the four thinking styles. The fMRI data analysis suggests that each thinking style may have its own cognitive activation system, involving the frontal ventromedial, posterior medial, parietal, motor, and orbitofrontal cortex. The data also suggest that there is a left hemisphere relationship for the Material/Pragmatic and Thinking/Logical styles and a right activation relationship for Emotional/Feeling and Intuitive/Imaginative styles. Additionally, the unique self-reflection paradigm demonstrated that perception of self or self-image, may be influenced by personality type; a finding of potentially far-reaching implications.
Highlights
Understanding the neural basis of human personality is a core imperative of cognitive neuroscience [1,2] and social neuroscience [3,4]
The aim of the current study was to explore the potential neural basis of personality related thinking styles using a self-reflection activation protocol. We hypothesized that this would elicit distinct significant activation in frontal regions such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and posterior medial cortex for each of the four traits. This hypothesis was supported by a significant correlation between blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activation (ROI) and personality orientation (PO) type; the Emotional type and the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) (BA6), the Logical types with vmPFC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BA9), the Imaginative with OFC (BA11), and Material/Pragmatic with vmPFC (BA25)
Our current results suggest that different personality orientations with the corresponding thinking styles, during the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experimental test introspection, are reflected in different neural organizations or preferred brain regional relationships
Summary
Understanding the neural basis of human personality is a core imperative of cognitive neuroscience [1,2] and social neuroscience [3,4]. One of the many important research questions is to further investigate the neurobiology of behavioral relationships and personality traits/orientations. Several studies have explored these associations between individual personality traits/orientations and decision making [9,10,11]. Personality traits and disorders are found to correlate with poor or maladaptive decision making (e.g., dissociative, compulsive and affective disorders). Maladaptive personality traits and disorders have been associated with deficits in distinct neural systems [12,13,14]
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