Summary: New research strengthens evidence linking personality traits to Alzheimer’s disease risk. The study found that brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s—amyloid and tau accumulation—can be detected earlier in people who score higher in neuroticism and lower in conscientiousness.
Source: Florida State University
Researchers at the Florida State University College of Medicine report that personality traits previously associated with dementia risk also predict early brain changes tied to Alzheimer’s disease.
The study examined two personality dimensions shown in earlier work to relate to dementia risk: neuroticism, which reflects a tendency toward negative emotions and stress sensitivity, and conscientiousness, which captures organization, responsibility and goal-directed behavior.
Antonio Terracciano, professor of geriatrics at FSU, explained that earlier studies focused on clinical diagnoses, while the present work examines neuropathology directly. “We are looking at the lesions in the brain that indicate underlying pathological change,” he said. “This study shows that even before clinical dementia appears, personality traits predict the accumulation of pathology associated with dementia.”
The findings, published online in Biological Psychiatry and archived in Florida State University’s open-access repository, combine neuroimaging data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) with a meta-analysis summarizing 12 prior studies on personality and Alzheimer’s neuropathology.
Altogether, the combined analysis includes data from more than 3,000 participants. Pooling results across multiple samples produces more reliable estimates of the relationships between personality and neuropathology than single studies alone can typically deliver.
Across both the BLSA sample and the meta-analysis, higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness were associated with greater accumulation of amyloid and tau—the proteins that form the plaques and tangles that characterize Alzheimer’s disease. Notably, these associations were stronger in studies limited to cognitively normal people than in those that included participants with cognitive impairment.
The pattern of results suggests that personality may influence resilience to Alzheimer’s disease by delaying or preventing the buildup of neuropathology. Terracciano noted that lifelong differences in emotion regulation and behavior could underlie this effect: lower neuroticism is linked to better stress management and fewer mental health problems, while higher conscientiousness is consistently associated with healthier lifestyles, including regular physical activity.
Over time, these adaptive traits may support metabolic and immune functions that protect the brain and slow neurodegeneration, the authors propose. Advances in molecular brain imaging made this research possible, enabling measurement of amyloid and tau in living participants rather than relying solely on post-mortem examinations.
The BLSA, run by the National Institute on Aging, is one of the longest-running studies of human aging, beginning in 1958. Participants in the neuroimaging sub-study completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, a widely used five-factor personality assessment, and were free of dementia or severe medical conditions at enrollment.
Funding: This research was supported by the NIA Intramural Research Program and by NIA/NIH awards R01AG068093 and R01AG053297. The content is the authors’ responsibility and does not necessarily reflect the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Additional authors include FSU College of Medicine Professor Angelina Sutin, Assistant Professor Martina Luchetti and postdoctoral researcher Damaris Aschwanden. Other co-authors are affiliated with the National Institute on Aging, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Montpellier.
About this psychology and Alzheimer’s disease research news
Author: Doug Carlson
Source: Florida State University
Contact: Doug Carlson, Florida State University
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research (open access): “Personality associations with amyloid and tau: Results from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging and meta-analysis” by Antonio Terracciano et al., Biological Psychiatry.
Abstract
Personality associations with amyloid and tau: Results from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging and meta-analysis
Background
Higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness are established risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, but the neuropathological pathways that link personality to disease risk remain unclear. The study aimed to determine whether these personality traits are associated with in vivo measures of amyloid and tau neuropathology in a new sample and across multiple published datasets.
Methods
Participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory and underwent positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to quantify amyloid using 11C-labeled Pittsburgh Compound B and tau using 18F-flortaucipir tracers.
Results
Among cognitively normal BLSA participants, higher neuroticism was associated with greater cortical amyloid burden (odds ratio 1.68), while higher conscientiousness was associated with lower amyloid burden (odds ratio 0.61). These relationships persisted after adjusting for age, sex, education, depressive symptoms, hippocampal volume and APOE ε4 status. Similar patterns were observed for tau accumulation in the entorhinal cortex.
Random-effects meta-analyses of 12 studies (N ≈ 3,000) found that higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness were significantly associated with increased amyloid deposition. Meta-analyses of eight studies showed comparable associations between these traits and tau pathology. The associations were stronger in samples composed of cognitively normal individuals than in mixed cohorts, indicating these personality–proteopathy links appear before clinical symptoms arise.
Conclusions
By aggregating data across studies, this research clarifies the relationship between personality and Alzheimer’s neuropathology. The findings suggest that neuroticism and conscientiousness may influence biological vulnerability to amyloid and tau accumulation, and that adaptive personality traits could contribute to resistance against early neuropathological change.