Superior Frontal Gyrus Cortical Thickness Mediates the Association Between Openness to Experience and Theory of Mind: Evidence from the Human Connectome Project
Background: Theory of mind (ToM), the capacity to infer the mental states of others, varies considerably across healthy adults. Openness to experience has been linked both to social-cognitive abilities and to thinner prefrontal cortex, but whether cortical structure statistically accounts for the association between openness and ToM is unknown. We tested whether bilateral superior frontal gyrus…
The study, conducted using data from the Human Connectome Project involving 1,049 healthy young adults, examined the relationship between openness to experience and theory of mind (ToM). The research found that openness to experience positively impacts ToM accuracy, with a beta value of .081 and a p-value of .009. Individuals with higher openness were observed to have thinner left and right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), with beta values of -.085 and -.084, respectively.
The SFG thickness was also found to be associated with higher ToM accuracy, with beta values of -.082 and -.075 for left and right SFG, respectively. The indirect effects of SFG cortical thickness on the association between openness and ToM were significant, accounting for around 8.5% and 7.8% of the total effect. These findings suggest that SFG cortical thickness partially mediates the connection between openness to experience and social cognition, although further research is needed to establish a causal mechanism or neural efficiency.
Written by urgent.news from bioRxiv's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
