Laboratory of Biological Dynamics and Theoretical Medicine, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006 Sep;1(2):136-42. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsl016.
Neuroticism is a core personality trait that profoundly affects how individuals interpret and interact with their environment. Understanding neuroticism at a neurobiological level will be an important step toward identifying novel vulnerability factors for psychiatric illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Along these lines, recent work has identified neural activation patterns within the right anterior insula that correlates with an individual's degree of neuroticism. The present study aims to further characterize the circumstances under which neuroticism modulates insular activity. Sixteen healthy participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while playing a card game with varying degrees of outcome uncertainty. Activation within the bilateral anterior insula was found during all decisions, irrespective of uncertainty. However, a significant positive correlation between neuroticism and anterior insula activity was found only during 'certain decisions' (i.e. situations where the most probable outcome was clearly evident). Moreover, an increase in the right anterior insula activity during certain decisions was related to a behavioral mirroring effect such that the response latency for certain decisions approached the response latency for uncertain decisions. These findings suggest that increasing levels of neuroticism modulate neural activation in such a way that the brain interprets certainty as uncertain.
神经质是一种核心人格特质，它深刻地影响着个体如何解释和与环境互动。从神经生物学的角度理解神经质，将是识别抑郁症和焦虑症等精神疾病新的脆弱性因素的重要一步。沿着这些思路，最近的研究已经确定了右侧前脑岛内与个体神经质程度相关的神经激活模式。本研究旨在进一步描述神经质调节脑岛活动的情况。16 名健康参与者在玩一种具有不同结果不确定性的纸牌游戏时接受了功能磁共振成像。无论不确定性如何，双侧前脑岛在所有决策中都有激活。然而，只有在“确定决策”（即最可能的结果明显的情况下）时，神经质与前脑岛活动之间才存在显著的正相关。此外，在某些决策中，右侧前脑岛活动的增加与行为镜像效应有关，即某些决策的反应时趋近于不确定决策的反应时。这些发现表明，神经质水平的升高以一种使大脑将确定性解读为不确定性的方式调节神经激活。
