Sensory cortical processing and the biological basis of personality

Action-oriented personality traits such as sensation seeking, extraversion, and impulsivity have been related to a pronounced amplitude increase of auditory evoked scalp potentials with increasing stimulus intensity. Dipole source analysis represents a crucial methodological progress in this context, because overlapping subcomponents of the scalp potentials can be separated and can be related to their generating cortical structures. In a study on 40 healthy subjects, it was found that sensation seeking is clearly related to the auditory evoked response pattern (N1/P2-component, stimulus intensities: 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 dB SPL) of the superior temporal plane including primary auditory cortex, but not to that of secondary auditory areas in the lateral temporal cortex. These results support the concept that the serotonergic brain system, which is supposed to modulate sensory processing in primary auditory cortices, is an important factor underlying individual differences in sensation seeking.