Table 3.

Metabolic correlates.

Trait Measures	tNAA	Glx	Cho
Flexibility
Absorption	.56***⧫	−0.15	−0.51**
Control-reversed	−0.06	.41*	.37*
Agency
Social Potency	.42*	.17	.24
Aggression	−0.59***⧫	−0.19	.12
Discriminant Measures
Social Closeness	.22	.26	.46*
Stress Reaction	−0.12	−0.35	−0.34
Alienation	.17	−0.26	−0.15

Relationship between trait measures of agency and flexibility and CSF-corrected metabolite concentrations in the dACC voxel. N = 20, see Methods for details. All metabolites are partial volume corrected. Pearson correlations are presented. Glx = Glx complex. tNAA = total N-acetyl-aspartate and N-acetylaspartyl-glutamic acid. Cho = choline-containing compounds. Trait measures of emotion on the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Brief Form (MPQ-BF). Flexibility was assessed by Absorption: a measure of emotional range and capacity for emotional engagement across a wide range of internal and external stimuli; and Control-reversed: a measure of the preference for spontaneous over planned activities. Agency was assessed by Social Potency: a measure of agentic positive emotion; Aggression: a measure of agentic negative emotion. Discriminant Measures : Three measures of valenced emotion provide information on discriminant validity. Non-agentic positive emotion was evaluated by the Social Closeness scale, a measure of affiliation and social warmth, which is distinct from Social Potency (Grodin and White, 2015). Non-agentic negative emotion was evaluated by the Stress Reaction scale, a measure of ruminative distress, which is distinct from Aggression; and the Alienation scale, a measure of internal feelings of interpersonal alienation, also distinct from Aggression (see Suppl. Table S1 and S2). Correlations between 0.3 and 0.5 represent medium-sized effects; correlations greater than or equal to 0.5 represent large-sized effects.

^***unadjusted p ≤ 0.005,

^**unadjusted p = .01,

^*unadjusted p ≤ 0.05.Preliminary results (adjusted p <.05) are in italics.

^⧫Effects significant after correction for multiple comparisons (Holm-Bonferroni sequential adjusted α criterion = 0.0071, 0.0083) are in bold.