Oh Hwamee
Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States.
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2022 Jul 13;14:900581. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.900581. eCollection 2022.
Emerging evidence suggests that some personality traits may link to the vulnerability to or protection for Alzheimer's disease (AD). A causal mechanism underlying this relationship, however, remains largely unknown. Using F-Florbetaben positron emission tomography (PET) binding to beta-amyloid (Aβ) plaques, a pathological feature of AD, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated pathological and functional correlates of extraversion and neuroticism in a group of healthy young and older subjects. We quantified the level of brain Aβ deposition in older individuals. Brain activity was measured in young adults using a task-switching fMRI paradigm. When we correlated personality scores of extraversion and neuroticism with these pathological and functional measures, higher extraversion, but not neuroticism, was significantly associated with lower global Aβ measures among older adults, accounting for age and sex. This association was present across widespread brain regions. Among young subjects, higher extraversion was associated with lower activity during task switching in the anterior cingulate cortex, left anterior insular cortex, left putamen, and middle frontal gyrus bilaterally, while higher neuroticism was associated with increased activity throughout the brain. The present results suggest that possibly efficient neuronal activity, extraversion, one of the lifelong personality traits, may confer the protective mechanism against the development of Aβ pathology during aging.
新出现的证据表明，某些人格特质可能与阿尔茨海默病（AD）的易感性或保护性有关。然而，这种关系背后的因果机制在很大程度上仍然未知。我们使用与AD的病理特征β-淀粉样蛋白（Aβ）斑块结合的F-氟代苯并噻唑正电子发射断层扫描（PET）以及功能磁共振成像（fMRI），研究了一组健康年轻人和老年人中外向性和神经质的病理及功能相关性。我们对老年人脑内Aβ沉积水平进行了量化。使用任务转换fMRI范式测量了年轻人的脑活动。当我们将外向性和神经质的人格分数与这些病理和功能指标进行关联时，在考虑年龄和性别的情况下，较高的外向性而非神经质与老年人较低的整体Aβ指标显著相关。这种关联在广泛的脑区中都存在。在年轻受试者中，较高的外向性与双侧前扣带回皮质、左侧前岛叶皮质、左侧壳核和额中回在任务转换期间较低的活动相关，而较高的神经质与全脑活动增加相关。目前的结果表明，外向性作为一种终身人格特质，可能通过高效的神经元活动，赋予在衰老过程中对抗Aβ病理发展的保护机制。
