Your brain structure depends on how trusting you are of others

Participants filled out a self-reported questionnaire about their tendency to trust others. They also were shown pictures of faces with neutral facial expressions and asked to evaluate how trustworthy they found each person in the picture. This gave researchers a metric, on a spectrum, of how trusting each participant was of others.

Researchers then took MRI scans of the participants' brains to determine how brain structure is associated with the tendency to be more trusting of others.

The researchers found differences in two areas of the brain.

Haas said that the most important finding was that the grey matter volume was greater in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, the brain region that evaluates social rewards, in people that tended to be more trusting of others.

The research might have implications for future treatments of psychological conditions such as autism.