Personality traits share overlapping neuroanatomical correlates with internalizing and externalizing psychopathology

Although personality traits have been linked to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology,the extent to which these traits and psychopathological phenotypes share a commonneuroanatomical structure is unclear. To address this gap, we used structural neuroimaging andself-report data from 1104 participants in the Human Connectome Project to characterize theneuroanatomical correlates of Five Factor Model (FFM) traits. We generated neuroanatomicalprofiles (NAPs) of FFM traits and psychopathology indices based on the thickness and surfacearea of each cortical region in the Desikan atlas. We used a profile matching approach tocompare the absolute similarity of the FFM trait NAPs and psychopathology index NAPs.Evaluating the individual regions in the NAPs suggest that FFM traits show small associationswith thickness and surface area in brain regions throughout the cortex, with prefrontal regionsbeing the most strongly related to multiple personality traits. Profile matching analyses indicatedthat the NAPs derived from Neuroticism and Extraversion demonstrated large absolutesimilarities to the NAPs of internalizing psychopathology. Similarly, the NAPs of Agreeablenessand Conscientiousness showed medium to large relations with the NAPs of externalizingpsychopathology. These results suggest that similar neuroanatomical correlates underlie specificpersonality traits and symptoms of psychopathology, providing support for dimensional modelsthat incorporate personality traits into the etiology and manifestation of psychopathology.