Cortical atrophy may influence personality

Changes in the brain can result in changes to personality -- for instance this is often seen in traumatic brain injury -- but this effect has not been studied much in MS. Scientists in Buffalo, NY looked into whether loss of brain tissue in the cerebral cortex could have any connection with personality characteristics.

They performed MRIs on and administered personality tests to 44 MS subjects and analyzed the results, controlling for factors such as cognitive function, depression, and T2 lesion volume. They found that greater cortical atrophy was associated with lower Extroversion and Conscientiousness scores. Moreover, subjects with greater cortical atrophy tended to score themselves higher on Openness and Conscientiousness than others scored them. These results suggest that loss of cortical tissue can affect personality, although the authors acknowledge that their findings need to be confirmed by analyzing changes in personality and cortical volume over time.