The relation between tendency for psychopathology and reduced frontal brain volume in healthy people

Objective: We hypothesized that tendency toward psychopathology is associat ed with lower frontotemporal volumes. Background: Although there is conside rable evidence for structural abnormalities in patients with major psychiat ric disorders and increased recognition that neural substrates may underlie individual differences in personality, there have been no studies in healt hy people attempting to relate personality to volumetric measures of brain structure. Method: We used magnetic resonance imaging with an advanced meth od for automated segmentation of cranial compartments to gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid. We examined the relation between frontal and temporal lobe volumes and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory m easures of tendency toward psychopathology in 59 healthy individuals. Resul ts: As hypothesized, higher scores on the clinical scales were associated w ith lower average frontal lobe volume. When the sample was divided accordin g to sex, however, these correlations were significant in men (n = 29) but not in women (n = 30). The highest correlation was observed between lower f rontal white matter volume in men and high schizophrenia scale score (r[27] = -0.59, p <0.001). Conclusions: The findings suggest that personality dim ensions in healthy people can be linked to neural substrates, which can pot entially serve as endophenotypic markers of disposition to psychopathology. The sexually dimorphic effects are consistent with gender-related differen ces in the clinical manifestations of psychiatric disorders and may suggest sex hormone modulation of the psychopathologic processes.