Personality and brain contribute to academic achievements of medical students

Abstract

There are many factors that influence the academic achievements of medical students, but how personality and brain modulate the academic achievements of medical students remains unclear. The study collected the personality, brain imaging, and academic data from 448 medical students at Tianjin Medical University with admission time between 2008 and 2017. Four types of academic achievements, including behavioral and social sciences, clinical sciences and skills, basic biomedical sciences, and scientific methods, were assessed by the academic records of 58 courses. Personality was evaluated by Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire and Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory. Brain structural and functional properties, including gray matter volume, spontaneous brain activity and functional connectivity, were computed based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Linear regression was used to evaluate the associations between personality and academic achievements. A voxel-wise correlation was used to identify areas of the brain where structural and functional properties were associated with academic achievements. Mediation analysis was used to test whether brain properties and personality independently contribute to academic achievements. Our results showed that novelty seeking (NS) was negatively correlated, and conscientiousness was positively correlated with all types of academic achievements. Brain functional properties showed negatively correlated with academic achievement in basic biomedical sciences. However, we did not find any mediation effect of the brain functional properties on the association between personality (NS and conscientiousness) and academic achievement in basic biomedical sciences, nor mediation effect of the personality (NS and conscientiousness) on the association between brain functional properties and academic achievement in basic biomedical sciences. These findings suggest that specific personality (NS and conscientiousness) and brain functional properties independently contribute to academic achievements in basic biomedical sciences, and that modulation of these properties may benefit academic achievements among medical students.