title: Activity in medial prefrontal cortex during cognitive evaluation of threatening stimuli as a function of personality style.
abstract: Cognitive evaluation of emotional stimuli involves a network of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). However, threatening stimuli may be perceived with differential salience in different individuals. The goal of our study was to evaluate how different personality styles are associated with differential modulation of brain activity during explicit recognition of fearful and angry facial expressions. Twenty-eight healthy subjects underwent fMRI. Based on a cognitivist model, subjects were categorized according to how they attribute salience to emotional stimuli and how they regulate their emotional activation. We compared 14 phobic prone (PP) subjects, whose identity is more centered on the inner experience ("inward") and around control of environmental threat, and 14 eating disorders prone (EDP) subjects, whose identity is more centered on external referential contexts ("outward") and much less around control of threatening stimuli. During fMRI subjects either matched the identity of one of two angry and fearful faces to that of a simultaneously presented target face or identified the expression of a target face by choosing one of two simultaneously presented linguistic labels. The fMRI results indicated that PP subjects had greater mPFC activation when compared with EDP subjects during cognitive labeling of threatening stimuli. Activity in the mPFC also correlated with personality style scores. These results demonstrate that PP subjects recruit greater neuronal resources in mPFC whose activity is associated with cognitive aspects that are closely intertwined with emotional processing. These findings are consistent with the contention that cognitive evaluation and salience of emotional stimuli are associated with different personality styles.
authors.affiliation: Psychiatric Neuroscience Group, Section on Mental Disorders, Department of Psychiatric and Neurological Sciences, University of Bari, Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rubino
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Blasi
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Latorre
authors.forename: Leonardo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fazio
authors.forename: Immacolata
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: d'Errico
authors.forename: Viridiana
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Mazzola
authors.forename: Grazia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Caforio
authors.forename: Marcello
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nardini
authors.forename: Teresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Popolizio
authors.forename: Ahmad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hariri
authors.forename: Giampiero
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Arciero
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bertolino
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006791:Hostility; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen