The Assertive Brain: Anterior Cingulate Phosphocreatine plus Creatine Levels Correlate With Self-Directedness in Healthy Adolescents, 2019, Squarcina

[Andy]

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; 9 males and 18 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.

Open access, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00763/full

 

[duncan]

"Therefore our results represent a step forward for personality neuroscience within the study of biochemical systems and brain structures."

Bets?

 

[Mithriel]

Personality traits are such a dubious, subjective subject this may be the start of something that will become a firm science one day .... or maybe not

 

[Subtropical Island]

Open access, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00763/full

I always find myself wondering about chicken and egg with this sort of thing. When people find objective biophysical markers that can be correlated with how curmudgeonly etc one is, I am left wondering if what they’re finding is a degree of illness or discomfort that leads a person to be less upbeat and enthusiastic than they might otherwise be.

I’m not sure that I’m expressing myself terribly well.

An example might help: I have a friend who is undeniably a happy, healthy and upbeat person who is full of energy, interest in others, emotional resilience and every other ‘psychological’ trait one might wish for. This person is, like a lot of people around the world, also lactose intolerant. When my friend has consumed lactose there is some physical discomfort but outwardly the first sign is grumpiness. I can unerringly know when lactose has been consumed purely based on negativity, grumpiness and avoidant behaviours. Even quite early on in a given situation when when my friend is not yet conscious of it.
Now I know this sounds a bit like a rhetorical device but it’s a real life example.

The point being that it leads me to wonder how many people in my life who ‘everyone’ considered to ‘just have a grumpy personality’ might in fact have been unwell, perhaps unknown to themselves. Maybe they were intolerant of something in their environment and had been so long that they assumed grumpiness to be their normal state too. Maybe they have an illness as yet undiagnosed? Or that the people judging are unaware of.

I’m not saying this is the case for these teens. Just wondering how we would know.
Are the markers showing something else that happens to correlate with their ‘personality’ traits?