The Relationship Between Personality Traits and Well-Being via Brain Functional Connectivity

Different single personality traits have been found to be closely related to well-being, and single personality traits and well-being shared multiple neural substrates. Yet little is known about how the multi-trait profile, which better reflects individual differences in terms of taxonomy, is related to multi-faceted well-being, and whether the spontaneous brain activities of their common neural substrates can partially explain this relationship. To advance our understanding, we examined the relationships among personality traits, well-being, and brain functional connectivity generated in resting-state functional MRI among 729 healthy participants. We first identified a linear combination of personal traits (i.e., higher extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness, but lower neuroticism) that was most relevant to a set of well-being indicators (i.e., positive affect, life satisfaction, and meaning of purpose) by considering their canonical correlational relation. Next, by using the network-based statistic method, we identified the sub-network associated with the well-being canonical variate. The subnetwork was formed by functional connectivity within and between multiple brain networks spanning from primary sensory networks to high-order networks. Moreover, the mediation analyses showed that the relationship between personality trait variate and well-being variate was explained by higher positive functional connectivity and higher global network efficiency within the identified sub-network. These findings suggest that effective functional communication within and between multiple brain networks can be a potentially important mechanism for promoting better well-being.