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Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative.

ABSTRACT: Individuals often interpret the same event in different ways. How do personality traits modulate brain activity evoked by a complex stimulus? Here we report results from a naturalistic paradigm designed to draw out both neural and behavioral variation along a specific dimension of interest, namely paranoia. Participants listen to a narrative during functional MRI describing an ambiguous social scenario, written such that some individuals would find it highly suspicious, while others less so. Using inter-subject correlation analysis, we identify several brain areas that are differentially synchronized during listening between participants with high and low trait-level paranoia, including theory-of-mind regions. Follow-up analyses indicate that these regions are more active to mentalizing events in high-paranoia individuals. Analyzing participants' speech as they freely recall the narrative reveals semantic and syntactic features that also scale with paranoia. Results indicate that a personality trait can act as an intrinsic "prime," yielding different neural and behavioral responses to the same stimulus across individuals.

SUBMITTER: Finn ES

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5966466 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative.

Finn Emily S ES Corlett Philip R PR Chen Gang G Bandettini Peter A PA Constable R Todd RT

Nature communications 20180523 1

Individuals often interpret the same event in different ways. How do personality traits modulate brain activity evoked by a complex stimulus? Here we report results from a naturalistic paradigm designed to draw out both neural and behavioral variation along a specific dimension of interest, namely paranoia. Participants listen to a narrative during functional MRI describing an ambiguous social scenario, written such that some individuals would find it highly suspicious, while others less so. Usi ...[more]

PMID: 29795116

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Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative.

Publications

Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative.

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