Being A People Person Is All In The Brain

Whether you are a 'people person' or not is down to the structure of your brain, according to new research from Cambridge University.


According to the new research, people who are warm, sentimental and enjoy the company of others have a greater concentration of grey matter in the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum than those who are more independent and detached.

Maël Lebreton and colleagues from the Cambridge Department of Psychiatry, in collaboration with Oulu University, Finland, gave questionnaires to 41 male volunteers to measure 'Social Reward Dependance'. The questionnaire included items such as, "I make a warm personal connection with most people" and "I like to please other people as much as I can."

A brain scanning technology called Magnetic Resonance Imaging was used to assess the concentration of grey matter in different brain areas.

 "Sociability and emotional warmth are very complex features of our personality. This research helps us understand at a biological level why people differ in the degrees to which we express those traits." claimed Dr Graham Murray, who led the research.

He did, however, warn that this may not be a cause and effect relationship.

"As this research is only correlational and cross-sectional, it cannot prove that brain structure determines personality. It could even be that your personality, through experience, helps in part to determine your brain structure."

Previous research has shown that the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum are involved in processing sweet tastes and sexual stimuli.

"It's interesting that the degree to which we find social interaction rewarding relates to the structure of our brains in regions that are important for very simple biological drives such as food, sweet liquids and sex. Perhaps this gives us a clue to how complex features like sentimentality and affection evolved from structures that in lower animals originally were only important for basic biological survival processes." added Dr Murray

He also suggested that the research could further the understanding of mental illness.

"Patients with certain psychiatric conditions often experience difficulties in feeling emotional closeness, and this can have a big impact on their life. It could be that the cause of these difficulties is at least partly due to brain structural features of those disorders,"

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