Differences of Prefrontal Cortex Activity Between Picture-Based Personality Tests: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Abstract

This study reports on brain activity induced by picture-based personality tests. Near-infrared spectroscopy is a newly developed, noninvasive technology in neuroimaging that can measure brain activity through blood volume changes. We measure the prefrontal cortex (Brodmann Area 10 [BA10]) activities of adolescents during the Rorschach (1921), the Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study (PFS; Hayashi, 1964), and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943). BA10 showed that the PFS was left-hemisphere dominant and significantly different from the Rorschach and TAT, which showed a tendency to be right-hemisphere dominant. We believe that this tendency reflects emotion and sociality.

Acknowledgments

We thank the participants and their guardians in this study. We also thank Professor Toshiki Ogawa at University of Tsukuba and the reviewers and editor for their useful comments.

This work was financially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) No. 18330149 of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The main content of this study was reported at the XIX International Congress of Rorschach and Projective Methods on July 21–25, 2008, in Leuven, Belgium.