Sensation seeking correlates with increased white matter integrity of structures associated with visuospatial processing in healthy adults

Andrea Escelsior; Alberto Inuggi; Maria Bianca Amadeo; Batya Engel-Yeger; Alice Trabucco; Davide Esposito; Claudio Campus; Anna Bovio; Sara Comparini; Beatriz Pereira da Silva; Gianluca Serafini; Monica Gori; Mario Amore

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1267700

Sensation seeking correlates with increased white matter integrity of structures associated with visuospatial processing in healthy adults

Front Neurosci. 2023 Oct 26:17:1267700. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1267700. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Section of Psychiatry, Department of Neuroscience, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology, Genetics, Maternal and Child Health (DINOGMI), University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy.
² IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genoa, Italy.
³ U-VIP Unit for Visually Impaired People, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy.
⁴ Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.

Abstract

Introduction: The ability to process sensory information is an essential adaptive function, and hyper- or hypo-sensitive maladaptive profiles of responses to environmental stimuli generate sensory processing disorders linked to cognitive, affective, and behavioral alterations. Consequently, assessing sensory processing profiles might help research the vulnerability and resilience to mental disorders. The research on neuroradiological correlates of the sensory processing profiles is mainly limited to the young-age population or neurodevelopmental disorders. So, this study aims to examine the structural MRI correlates of sensory profiles in a sample of typically developed adults.

Methods: We investigated structural cortical thickness (CT) and white matter integrity, through Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), correlates of Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP) questionnaire subscales in 57 typical developing subjects (34F; mean age: 32.7 ± 9.3).

Results: We found significant results only for the sensation seeking (STS) subscale. Positive and negative correlations emerged with fractional anisotropy (FA) and radial diffusivity (RD) in anterior thalamic radiation, optic radiation, superior longitudinal fasciculus, corpus callosum, and the cingulum bundle. No correlation between sensation seeking and whole brain cortical thickness was found.

Discussion: Overall, our results suggest a positive correlation between sensation seeking and higher white matter structural integrity in those tracts mainly involved in visuospatial processing but no correlation with gray matter structure. The enhanced structural integrity associated with sensation seeking may reflect a neurobiological substrate linked to active research of sensory stimuli and resilience to major psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.

Keywords: healthy adults; mental disorders; neuroimaging; resilience factors; sensation seeking; sensory profile; visuospatial processing.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.