Linking novelty seeking and harm avoidance personality traits to cerebellar volumes

Abstract

Personality traits are multidimensional traits comprising cognitive, emotional, and behavioral characteristics, and a wide array of cerebral structures mediate individual variability. Differences in personality traits covary with brain morphometry in specific brain regions, and neuroimaging studies showed structural or functional abnormalities of cerebellum in subjects with personality disorders, suggesting a cerebellar role in affective processing and an effect on personality characteristics. To test the hypothesis that cerebellar [white matter (WM) and cortex] volumes are correlated with scores obtained in the four temperamental scales of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) by Cloninger, a total of 125 healthy participants aged 18-67 years of both genders (males = 52) completed the TCI and underwent magnetic resonance imaging. The scores obtained in each temperamental scale were associated with the volumes of cerebellar WM and cortex of right and left hemispheres separately by using linear regression analyses. In line with our hypothesis, novelty seeking (NS) scores were positively associated with WM and cortex cerebellar volumes. Harm avoidance (HA) scores were negatively associated with WM and cortex cerebellar volumes. The range of individual differences in NS and HA scores reflects the range of variances of cerebellar volumes. The present data indicating a cerebellar substrate for some personality traits extend the relationship between personality and brain areas to a structure up to now thought to be involved mainly in motor and cognitive functions, much less in emotional processes and even less in personality individual differences.

Neuroanatomical correlates of negative emotionality-related traits: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Decreased gGMV with higher N scores has been reported in two studies (Jackson et al, 2011;Liu WY et al, 2013 -result restricted to females subgroup only). No significant gWMV variations with HA (Laricchiuta et al, 2014a), or with N (Jackson et al 2011 were detected, although a greater decline of gWMV with age in neurotics has been observed (Jackson et al, 2011). No significant associations between HA scores and volume of cerebral hempisheres volume was found, only in the males subgroup a negative HA -cerebellar cortex correlations (Laricchiuta et al 2014a).…”

“…No significant gWMV variations with HA (Laricchiuta et al, 2014a), or with N (Jackson et al 2011 were detected, although a greater decline of gWMV with age in neurotics has been observed (Jackson et al, 2011). No significant associations between HA scores and volume of cerebral hempisheres volume was found, only in the males subgroup a negative HA -cerebellar cortex correlations (Laricchiuta et al 2014a). Knutson et al (2001) noticed a diminished ratio between the total brain volume and the remainder of the intracranial volume with N-Anxiety scores, as measured with NEO-PI-R.…”

La Impulsividad y su Asociación con la Inclinación de la Frente

“…Esta dimensión, no sólo está constituida por la evaluación de la impulsividad, sino que incluye facetas como actividad exploratoria, extravagancia y planificación (Gutiérrez-Zotes et al,), lo que podría explicar esta más baja asociación. En comparación, la dimensión Evitación del Riesgo describe a los sujetos con mayor inhibición conductual, aburrimiento y pesimismo, considerándose más ansiosos y menos impulsivos, lo que va en consonancia con nuestros resultados y con los estudios que describen que sujetos sanos con un patrón conductual de Búsqueda de Novedad obtienen puntuaciones opuestas en Evitación del Riesgo (Laricchiuta et al, 2014).…”

New evidence for the cerebellar involvement in personality traits

“…All participants were right-handed as assessed with the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971). Seventy-five out of the 100 subjects had also been included in our previous study (Laricchiuta et al, 2012), while 25 new subjects were added. Out of 125 subjects of the previous study, fifty participants were not included in the present research since their DTI images exhibited bad coverage and venetian blind artifacts at the level of the cerebellum.…”

“…Recently, by using a Region of Interest (ROI)-based approach, in a large sample of healthy subjects we reported WM and GM cerebellar volumes associated positively with NS and negatively with HA (Laricchiuta et al, 2012), while no significant association was found between cerebellar volumes and RD and P scores.…”