An fMRI investigation of the relations between Extraversion, internalizing psychopathology, and neural activation following reward receipt in the Human Connectome Project sample.

Courtland S Hyatt,Max M Owens,Joshua D Miller,Emily S Hallowell,Lawrence H Sweet,Brandon M Weiss

doi:10.1017/pen.2020.11

Courtland S Hyatt, Max M Owens + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1017/pen.2020.11

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Abstract

Quantitative models of psychopathology (i.e., HiTOP) propose that personality and psychopathology are intertwined, such that the various processes that characterize personality traits may be useful in describing and predicting manifestations of psychopathology. In the current study, we used data from the Human Connectome Project (N = 1050) to investigate neural activation following receipt of a reward during an fMRI task as one shared mechanism that may be related to the personality trait Extraversion (specifically its sub-component Agentic Extraversion) and internalizing psychopathology. We also conducted exploratory analyses on the links between neural activation following reward receipt and the other Five-Factor Model personality traits, as well as separate analyses by gender. No significant relations (p < .005) were observed between any personality trait or index of psychopathology and neural activation following reward receipt, and most effect sizes were null to very small in nature (i.e., r < |.05|). We conclude by discussing the appropriate interpretation of these null findings, and provide suggestions for future research that spans psychological and neurobiological levels of analysis.

Highlights

Extraversion is a broad, higher order personality trait domain that is associated with lower level facets such as gregariousness, dominance, and positive emotionality
Moving away from traditional categorical diagnoses, quantitative models of psychopathology (i.e., HiTOP; Kotov et al, 2017) identify a construct akin to the low pole of Extraversion as a major spectrum of psychopathology, and a construct deemed Detachment is instantiated in the DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorder diagnosis (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
The goal of the current study was to examine the relations between Extraversion, two of its constituent facets, a continuous measure of internalizing psychopathology, and neural activation following reward receipt using a functional neuroimaging methodology

Summary

Introduction

Extraversion is a broad, higher order personality trait domain that is associated with lower level facets such as gregariousness, dominance, and positive emotionality. The facet assertiveness, which captures the agentic components of Extraversion like dominance, is more closely associated with feelings of autonomy (Sun, Kaufman, & Smillie, 2018) Overall, these lines of evidence suggest lower order aspects of Extraversion bear differential relations to these reward-adjacent constructs depending on how they are operationalized. A full review of these relations is beyond the scope of this manuscript, but several important trends emerged Both the agentic (e.g., dominance, assertiveness) and communal aspects of Extraversion (e.g., positive emotionality, enthusiasm) bore negative relations to self-report and interview ratings of depression, social dysfunction, as well as the pathological traits withdrawal, anhedonia, intimacy avoidance, and anxiousness measured by the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (DeYoung, Carey, Krueger, & Ross, 2016; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012). When agentic-extraverted individuals are placed in a context where they receive a reward, they may experience increased dopaminergic activation in the mesolimbic pathway because they have received a learning signal about the presence of reward in the environment, and/or they experience hedonic enjoyment ( there is evidence that opioid systems are more closely linked to hedonic enjoyment; Berridge, 2007)

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