Department of Neurology and Epileptology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Department for Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2017 Dec 15;7(1):17669. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-17706-2.
Neuroticism is one of the "Big Five" personality factors and is characterized by a tendency to experience negative affect. We aimed to investigate how neuroticism influences the neural correlates for processing of emotional facial expressions. 68 healthy participants were presented with emotional dynamic facial stimuli, i.e. happy, neutral or angry, during functional MRI. Brain activations for the contrasts emotional vs. neutral, happy vs. neutral and angry vs. neutral were correlated with individuals' neuroticism scores as obtained by the NEO Five Factor Inventory questionnaire and additionally investigated for gender differences. The bilateral medial temporal gyrus (MTG) was identified as key region in the processing of emotional faces and activations within this region correlated with individual neuroticism scores. Although female participants showed significantly stronger activation differences between emotional and neutral facial expressions in the left MTG, the correlation between activation and neuroticism scores did not show any significant gender differences. Our results offer for the first time a biological correlate within the face processing network for enhanced reactivity of neurotic individuals to emotional facial expressions which occurs similarly for both male and female participants.
神经质是“五大”人格因素之一，其特征是倾向于体验负面情绪。我们旨在研究神经质如何影响处理情绪面部表情的神经相关物。68 名健康参与者在功能磁共振成像期间接受了情绪动态面部刺激，即快乐、中性或愤怒。通过 NEO 五因素问卷获得的个体神经质得分与情绪与中性、快乐与中性和愤怒与中性对比的大脑激活相关，并进一步研究了性别差异。双侧内侧颞叶（MTG）被确定为处理情绪面孔的关键区域，该区域内的激活与个体神经质得分相关。尽管女性参与者在左 MTG 中表现出情绪和中性面部表情之间的激活差异明显更强，但激活与神经质得分之间的相关性没有显示出任何显著的性别差异。我们的研究结果首次为神经质个体对情绪面部表情的增强反应提供了面部处理网络内的生物学相关性，这种反应在男性和女性参与者中是相似的。
