Brain Chemistry Holds the Key to Individual Personality Traits

by JShree on  August 14, 2008 at 2:50 PM Research News
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Individual personality traits-particularly reward dependency-are actually linked to brain chemistry, researchers have confirmed by using positron emission tomography(PET).

This finding holds promise for better understanding and treating substance abuse and other addictive behaviours.

The researchers focused their investigation for the first time on the role of the brain's opioidergic (or endorphine) system-specifically, the connection between an individual's level of reward expectancy and the brain's ability to transmit naturally occurring opiates.

The study was conducted on 23 males with no history of substance abuse, who were administered Fluoro-ethyl-diprenorphine-a radiolabeled chemical that binds readily to the brain's naturally occurring opiate system- and then underwent a PET scan.

They then compared the scans with the results of each participant's Cloninger temperament and character inventory, a questionnaire that assesses human personality based on four dimensions: novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence and persistence.

This revealed that the binding to opiate receptors in the ventral striatum-an area of the brain known to be a central part of the reward system-narrowly linked to the individual degree of reward dependence.

Those participants, who were seen to have a high need to feel rewarded by approval, were also those with the highest uptake of opiates, or endorphins, in the reward system.

"Our main finding was that reward dependence is the only personality dimension correlated with opiate receptor binding, and that positive correlation was restricted to the ventral striatum, which is considered the key area of the human reward system and of the development of addictive behavior," said Peter Bartenstein, M.D., professor of nuclear medicine, Ludwig Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany.

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