Personality articles from across Nature Portfolio

Self-report questionnaires are vital in psychology, yet how the brain generates these responses is unknown. We found that items assessing the same trait produced similar activation patterns specifically in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).

Brain functional connectivity analysis in a large cohort reveals neuroticism’s heterogeneous subcomponents, linked to genetic variation and psychological factors through distinct resting-state networks, suggesting an intermediate phenotype bridging genes and mind.

Sexual differentiation in brain function along a sensory to-higher-order cognition axis is related to physiological aging and distinguishes between adolescent risk for mood vs behavioral problems, both longitudinally and cross-sectionally.