Hippocampal response to emotional stimuli to evaluate personality stability in fMRI

The aim of this research is to evaluate the relationship between hippocampal responses to emotional stimuli and the mental stabilities of people using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We assessed personality features and physical symptoms of the subjects using psychological tests and categorized the subjects into two groups: the mentally stable group and the unstable group. Moreover, we measured brain functional reaction under relax, pleasant, unpleasant human relationship, and generally unpleasant stimuli using fMRI. The results in the fMRI showed that the hippocampus activities under the pleasant, human, and unpleasant stimuli increased with the ascent in the value of mental instability. Our findings suggested that memory process in hippocampus would crucially influence the emotional reaction of the mentally unstable people.