New findings of Chinese and foreign medical experts: personality characteristics affect brain health

Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University revealed on the same day that Professor Yu Jintai's team in the Department of Neurology of Fudan University, together with the Institute of Brain Intelligence Science and Technology of Fudan University, Cambridge University, Oxford University and other interdisciplinary teams, based on large-scale biomedical databases and big data statistical modeling methods, The relevant research results obtained were published in Nature Mental Health, a sub journal of Nature, and selected as Research Briefing for reporting.

The researchers found that people with higher scores of enthusiasm, diligence, sociability and curiosity had better brain health indicators and lower risk of brain disease; However, people with higher scores of tense personality traits have worse brain health indicators and higher risk of brain disease.

It is reported that brain health is a state covering brain cognition, feeling, emotion, behavior and motor functions, enabling people to fully exert their potential in the life cycle. Brain disease is a brain health disorder characterized by brain function and/or structural damage, mainly including nervous system diseases and mental diseases, which has become an important cause of disability and death worldwide. However, so far, there is no effective treatment method to prevent or reverse the progress of many brain diseases, and active primary prevention is still an important means to maintain brain health and prevent and control brain diseases.

At the same time, personality, as an important branch of psychology, has been proved to be closely related to the occurrence of various physical and mental diseases. Previously, there was no systematic study on the relationship between personality traits and brain health and brain diseases.

The research team followed up nearly 300000 people based on the British biological sample bank queue, with an average follow-up of 9.49 years. The team extracted questionnaire data from these participants, constructed five categories of personality characteristics, including agreeableness (enthusiasm), conscientiousness (diligence), neuroticism (nervousness), extraversion (sociability) and openness (curiosity), and explored the relationship and potential mechanism between these personality characteristics and common brain diseases.

Using the relevant risk proportion model, the research team found that there was a significant vertical correlation between five personality characteristics and the risk of six new brain diseases. In addition, compared with nervous system diseases (4% - 18%), the effect value of personality characteristics on the risk of mental illness (19% - 53%) is much larger. The research team also confirmed the causal relationship between personality characteristics and some brain diseases (stroke, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression).

key word: Brain disease personality characteristics Extraversion Structural damage Subjournal