Alyssa Farkas
The goal of personality neuroscience is to identify links between brain measurements and psychological characteristics. Small sample size and the exclusion of out-of-sample prediction are only two of the reasons that have severely constrained findings yet. We took advantage of the recent availability of a sizable database and the development of precise standards for best practices in neuroimaging analyses of individual differences. The Human Connectome Project database contained 884 young, healthy adults' resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. We used individual functional connectivity matrices to attempt to predict personality qualities from the "Big Five," as measured by the Neuroticism/Extraversion/Openness Five-Factor Inventory exam. We measured how well the neuroimaging data might predict each of the five personality characteristics using a crossvalidated framework and test-retest replication after regressing for possible confounds (such as age, gender, handedness, and fluid intelligence).