Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: NEUROBIOLOGY OF THE STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY: DOPAMINE, FACILITATION OF INCENTIVE MOTIVATION, AND EXTRAVERSION by Richard A. Depue and Paul F. Collins This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. 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To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ NEUROBIOLOGY OF THE STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY: DOPAMINE, FACILITATION OF INCENTIVE MOTIVATION, AND EXTRAVERSION Richard A. Depue, Cornell University Department of Human Development Laboratory of Neurobiology of Personality and Emotion NG21 MVR Hall Ithaca, New York 14853 rad5(a)cornell.edu Paul F. Collins, University of Oregon Department of Psychology Eugene, Oregon 97403 pcollins(a)oregon.uoregon.edu KEYWORDS: personality, extraversion, dopamine, incentive motivation, neurobiology behavioral sensitization, heterosynaptic plasticity ABSTRACT: Extraversion has two central characteristics: 1) Interpersonal engagement consisting of affiliation (enjoying and valuing close interpersonal bonds, being warm and affectionate)and agency (being socially dominant and enjoying leadership roles, being assertive, exhibitionistic and having a sense of potency in accomplishing goals) and 2) Impulsivity, which emerges from the interaction of extraversion and a second, independent trait (constraint). Agency is a more general motivational disposition including dominance, ambition, mastery, efficacy, and achievement. Positive affect (a combination of positive feelings and motivation) is closely associated with extraversion. Extraversion is accordingly based on positive incentive motivation. Parallels between extraversion (particularly its agency component) and a mammalian approach system based on positive incentive motivation implicate a neuroanatomical network, and is neurotransmitter in the processing of incentive motivation. A corticolimbic-striatal-thalamic network (a) integrates the salient incentive context in the medial orbital cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus; (b) encodes the intensity of incentive stimuli in a motive circuit composed of the nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum, and ventral tegmental area dopamine projection system; and (c) creates an incentive motivational state that can be transmitted to the motor system. Individual differences in the functioning of this network arise from functional variation in the properties of the ventral tegmental area dopamine projections, which are directly involved in coding the intensity of incentive motivation. Animal evidence suggests that there are three neurodevelopmental sources of individual differences in dopamine: genetic, "experience-expectant", and "experience-dependent processes". Individual differences promote variation in the heterosynaptic plasticity that enhances the connection between incentive context and incentive motivation and behavior. Our psychobiological threshold model explains the effects of individual differences in dopamine transmission on behavior and their relation to personality traits. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive. Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.depue.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.depue ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.depue gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.depue When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit