View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by RERO DOC Digital Library Brain Imaging and Behavior (2011) 5:86–96 DOI 10.1007/s11682-011-9114-7 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Neural correlates of personality dimensions and affective measures during the anticipation of emotional stimuli Annette Beatrix Brühl & Marie-Caroline Viebke & Thomas Baumgartner & Tina Kaffenberger & Uwe Herwig Published online: 25 January 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract Neuroticism and extraversion are proposed per- measures. Neuroticism-related regions were partially cross- sonality dimensions for individual emotion processing. correlated with anxiety and depression and vice versa. Neuroticism is correlated with depression and anxiety Extraversion-related activity was not correlated with the disorders, implicating a common neurobiological basis. other measures. The neural correlates of extraversion Extraversion is rather inversely correlated with anxiety and compared with those of neuroticism and affective measures depression. We examined neural correlates of personality in fit with concepts of different neurobiological bases of the relation to depressiveness and anxiety in healthy adult personality dimensions and point at predispositions for subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging affective disorders. during the cued anticipation of emotional stimuli. Distrib- uted particularly prefrontal but also other cortical regions Keywords Extraversion . Neuroticism . Emotion and the thalamus were associated with extraversion. processing . fMRI . Affective disorders Parieto-occipital and temporal regions and subcortically the caudate were correlated with neuroticism and affective Introduction Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11682-011-9114-7) contains supplementary material, The relation between personality dimensions and affective which is available to authorized users. disorders is subject of longstanding discussions, beginning A. B. Brühl (*) : M.-C. Viebke : U. Herwig with the ancient Greeks (Kotov et al. 2010). Nowadays, Clinic for Social and General Psychiatry, neurobiological aspects of personality factors or dimensions Psychiatric University Hospital Zürich, may serve as one approach to the neurobiology of and Militärstrasse 8, the predisposition for affective disorders (Foster and 8021 Zürich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] MacQueen 2008). A variety of dimensional personality models have been T. Baumgartner developed. Amongst these models, two factors have been Department of Psychology, University of Basel, shown consistently: One factor addressing neuroticism or Missionsstrasse 62 a, 4055 Basel, Switzerland negative affectivity, the other factor including positive affectivity or extraversion (e.g. Carver and Connor-Smith T. Kaffenberger 2010; DeYoung and Gray 2009; Keightley et al. 2003; Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zürich, Kotov et al. 2010). The first model attempting to link Frauenklinikstrasse 26, 8091 Zürich, Switzerland personality and biological mechanisms was the model of Eysenck proposing neuroticism and extraversion as main U. Herwig factors of personality dimensions (DeYoung and Gray Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy III, 2009). Other factors as psychoticism, conscientiousness, University of Ulm, Leimgrubenweg 12-14, openness, agreeableness, disinhibition versus constraint 89075 Ulm, Germany have been proposed, but were less broadly supported. Brain Imaging and Behavior (2011) 5:86–96 87 In particular the association between neuroticism and Kumari et al. 2004), subcortical (Canli et al. 2001; Kumari affective disorders, particularly major depression and et al. 2004; Simon et al. 2010) and occipital brain areas anxiety disorders has been noted early and continuously (Amin et al. 2004). (reviews: e.g. Clark et al. 1994; Enns and Cox 1997; Jylha We wanted to address the neurobiological aspects of the and Isometsa 2006, meta-analyses: Kotov et al. 2010; relationship between the personality-dimensions neuroti- Malouff et al. 2005). The other personality ‘superfactor’ in cism and extraversion on the one hand and affective several models of personality opposed to neuroticism is measures on the other hand within the frame of an extraversion (Klein et al. 2009). The relation between emotion task. Cognitive and emotional processes in neu- extraversion and affective disorders is less pronounced: A roticism share negative biases with depression concerning recent meta-analysis (Kotov et al. 2010) resulted in a trend attention, interpretation and memory of emotional stimuli of correlation between major depressive disorder and low (Martin 1985; Mathews and MacLeod 1994). In contrast, extraversion, the correlations between low extraversion and extraversion is characterized by increased experience of anxiety disorders as panic disorder, social phobia, obsessive positive emotions (Costa and McCrae 1980) and greater compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder sensitivity to positive or rewarding stimuli (Banich et al. revealed medium effect sizes. 2009; Lucas and Diener 2001). In mood and anxiety Besides being a risk- or predisposing factor for affective disorders and also in healthy subjects with depressed or disorders, particularly neuroticism has been shown to anxious mood, one of the main affected cognitive processes influence the course and response to differential treatment is the attitude towards the future, which is biased towards strategies in depression with high neuroticism predicting a negative expectations or ‘pessimism’ (Beck’s cognitive negative response to treatment in general, but particularly to triad, Beck 1967; Lavender and Watkins 2004; Pyszczynski psychotherapy (Keightley et al. 2003). A stronger distur- et al. 1987). This negative bias is most pronounced in bance of emotion regulation was proposed as reason for this ambiguous situations, in which anticipation can either be lower response to psychotherapy in highly neurotic patients negative, i.e. pessimistic, or anxious (Barlow 2000), or (Keightley et al. 2003). Due to these associations between positive, corresponding to an optimistic view. Neuroticism personality and affective disorders, personality traits can has been shown to correlate with pessimism (Marshall et al. serve as an approach to dimensional and subclinical 1992), some authors even proposing a major overlap or correlates of affective disorders. identity of the two concepts (Smith et al. 1989). Highly Neuroimaging studies as one way to examine the extraverted subjects on the other hand should not display neurobiology of mental processes have related a broad marked pessimistic or anxious reactions during the network of brain regions to personality traits: Neuroticism anticipation of negative and ambiguously cued emotional has been shown to correlate with activity in insula during stimuli as extraversion typically is characterized by a the anticipation of aversive stimuli (Simmons et al. 2006), sensitivity to pleasurable stimuli and reward and more cingulate cortex during emotional conflict (Haas et al. frequent and intense expression of positive affect (Winter 2007) and anticipatory fear (Kumari et al. 2007), prefrontal and Kuiper 1997). cortex in response to positive stimuli (Britton et al. 2007) Furthermore, pessimism has been shown to be a negative and negative stimuli (Canli et al. 2001; Simmons et al. predictor for somatic and mental health (Scheier and 2006), parieto-occipital areas due to fearful facial expres- Bridges 1995) and, for instance, for suicidal acts in sions (Chan et al. 2009) and subcortical brain regions in depression (Oquendo et al. 2004). response to anticipatory fear (Kumari et al. 2007). Address- Due to the relevance of anticipatory processes in mental ing the association between amygdalar activity and neurot- health and affective disorders, we have developed a task icism, results are mixed, with positive correlations in some addressing the cued anticipation of emotional pictures on studies (Cunningham et al. 2010; Haas et al. 2007), but also the neural level using functional magnetic resonance a number of studies finding no correlation with different imaging. To expect a negative event in situations with a tasks (Britton et al. 2007; Canli et al. 2002; Canli et al. possibly negative, but also possibly positive outcome, is a 2001; Chan et al. 2009; Deckersbach et al. 2006; Kumari et typical representation of pessimism, which we could show al. 2007; Simon et al. 2010). on the neural level. Therefore we particularly emphasize the In response to positive stimuli of different quality, anticipation of known ambiguously cued, potentially extraversion has been shown to correlate with amygdalar negative stimuli representing a condition which is prone activity (Canli et al. 2002; Canli et al. 2001; Vaidya et al. to evoke pessimistic attitudes. In previous studies using this 2007) and with activity in anterior cingulate (Canli et al. task we found a similarity of the patterns of brain activation 2004; Canli et al. 2001; Kumari et al. 2004). Further during the anticipation of clearly negative and ambiguously regions reported to be associated with extraversion were cued, potentially negative stimuli (Herwig et al. 2007). This dorsolateral and inferior prefrontal (Canli et al. 2001; similarity increased with increasing state depression in 88 Brain Imaging and Behavior (2011) 5:86–96 healthy subjects (Herwig et al. 2007) and in patients with