Extraversion and Neuroticism Related to Topological Efficiency in White Matter Network: An Exploratory Study Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging Tractography.

Abstract

White matter (WM) fibers underpin individual differences in extraversion and neuroticism. These personality traits are associated with integration of emotion, cognition, and behavior, which rely on a large-scale brain network. Thus, research at network level is needed to characterize neural underpinnings of extraversion and neuroticism. We performed diffusion tensor imaging on 68 healthy individuals and combined a WM network with graph theory analysis to investigate the connectivity of the whole-brain network and individual regions associated with extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion was negatively associated with local efficiency in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), and neuroticism was positively associated with local and global efficiencies mainly in the hippocampus and MPFC regions, respectively. These identified regions demonstrated connectivity with other cortical and subcortical regions. No reliable associations were found between the network local and global efficiencies and extraversion, as well as neuroticism. These findings indicated the association between specific personality dimensions and information transfer in the prefrontal-limbic regions, which provided further insight into the neural mechanism to characterize extraversion and neuroticism.