Response in cingulate cortex to emotional stimuli to evaluate personality stability in fMRI

The aim of this research is to evaluate the relationship between the response in cingulate cortex to emotional stimuli and the personal stabilities of people using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We assessed personality features and physical symptoms of the subjects using psychological tests and categorized the subjects into two groups: the mentally stable group and the unstable group. Moreover, we measured brain functional reaction under relax, pleasant, unpleasant human relationship, and generally unpleasant stimuli using fMRI. The results in the fMRI showed that the left and right posterior cingulate cortex activities under the human stimuli significantly increased with the ascent in the value of mental instability. And the right posterior cingulate cortex activities under the relax and unpleasant stimuli, and left and right posterior cingulate cortex activities under the pleasant stimuli tended to increase with the ascent in the value of mental instability. Our findings suggested that neural alarm system in cingulate would crucially influence the emotional reaction of the mentally unstable people.