Exploring the Neural Correlates of Openness/Intellect and Related Constructs Using New and Best Practices in Personality Neuroscience

Abstract

Personality neuroscience aims to understand the associations of brain structure and function with stable patterns of thought, behavior, emotion, and motivation. One broad personality dimension of interest in this field is Openness/Intellect. This trait describes individual differences in engagement with semantic and perceptual information, and subsumes a variety of societally relevant facets pertaining to higher-order cognitive processing. This dissertation examines the functional neural correlates of a number of facets beneath Openness/Intellect, including intelligence, creativity, and Psychoticism (sub-clinical psychosis proneness). Across three studies, this research aims to expand on past findings demonstrating associations of these traits with functional properties among broad macroscale brain networks implicated in abstract higher-order cognition, all within the context of broader predictive processing accounts of brain function. The first study showcases a functional gradient approach to test associations of creative achievement with functional similarity of higher-order brain networks. The second study demonstrates associations of intelligence, Openness/Intellect, and Psychoticism with various forms of dynamic brain network flexibility. Lastly, the third study explores individual differences in signatures of self-organized criticality in the brain, and how it relates to intelligence and Psychoticism. Through a variety of methods, these findings converge on the notion of Openness/Intellect and its facets being associated with individual differences in abstract information processing capabilities among broad cortical networks. This research provides a more nuanced perspective of the neural correlates of Openness/Intellect by demonstrating how its adaptive and maladaptive facets are related to different and complementary functional properties in the brain. Beyond Openness/Intellect, this research helps provide future avenues for understanding the associations of other normative and pathological personality dimensions with properties of brain function.