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; 17 males and 9 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.
Highlights
The genetic and neural underpinnings of personality traits have gained increasing interest within the scientific community
This study aims at exploring, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, the biochemical basis of personality during brain development in a sample of adolescents with the final goal of teasing apart the biochemical system associated with personality traits
Subjects had a total IQ of 101.73 ± 10.88 estimated with WISC or WAIS depending on age
Summary
The genetic and neural underpinnings of personality traits have gained increasing interest within the scientific community. The majority of neuroimaging and behavioral studies employed the temperament and character inventory (TCI) [1] with the aim of investigating personality traits in normal subjects or in patients. The TCI is a well known personality inventory developed by Robert Cloninger, which models personality using seven psychobiological factors [1]. It is composed of four temperament and three character scales. Twin studies reported that genetic factors have significant effects on temperament and on character dimensions, where the heritability does not show strong differences [3,4,5]
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