Beyond Dopamine: Possible Neurochemical Bases of Openness To Experience and Intellect
Beyond Dopamine: Possible Neurochemical Bases of Openness To Experience and Intellect In recent years, efforts have been made to understand how individual differences & personality traits relate to neurotransmitter systems, such as dopamine and serotonin (e.g., Alkalay et al. 2022). To my knowledge however, research on the neurobiology of openness is limited, and almost all focuses on dopamine. However, dopamine is linked to both openness and extraversion, though are thought to be related to separate parts of the dopamine system (DeYoung 2013), leaving openness independent from extraversion or openness with low extraversion unexplained in regards to neurochemical influences. Understanding the neurobiology of openness beyond dopamine may be beneficial to treatment of disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as persons with schizophrenia spectrum disorders tend to have high openness but low extraversion, and antipsychotics may worsen extraversion-linked symptoms, and autism is lin...