Dataset Information

Neural correlates of the use of psychological distancing to regulate responses to negative social cues: a study of patients with borderline personality disorder.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Emotional instability is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD); yet, little is understood about its underlying neural correlates. One possible contributing factor to emotional instability is a failure to adequately employ adaptive cognitive regulatory strategies such as psychological distancing. METHODS:To determine whether there are differences in neural dynamics underlying this control strategy between BPD patients and healthy control (HC) subjects, blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging signals were acquired as 18 BPD and 16 HC subjects distanced from or simply looked at pictures depicting social interactions. Contrasts in signal between distance and look conditions were compared between groups. RESULTS:Borderline personality disorder patients showed a different pattern of activation compared with HC subjects when looking at negative versus neutral pictures. When distancing versus looking at negative pictures, both groups showed decreased negative affect ratings and increased activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, areas near/along the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate/precuneus regions. However, the BPD group showed less BOLD signal change in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and IPS, less deactivation in the amygdala, and greater activation in the superior temporal sulcus and superior frontal gyrus. CONCLUSIONS:Borderline personality disorder and HC subjects display different neural dynamics while passively viewing social emotional stimuli. In addition, BPD patients do not engage the cognitive control regions to the extent that HCs do when employing a distancing strategy to regulate emotional reactions, which may be a factor contributing to the affective instability of BPD.

SUBMITTER: Koenigsberg HW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2821188 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Neural correlates of the use of psychological distancing to regulate responses to negative social cues: a study of patients with borderline personality disorder.

Koenigsberg Harold W HW Fan Jin J Ochsner Kevin N KN Liu Xun X Guise Kevin G KG Pizzarello Scott S Dorantes Christine C Guerreri Stephanie S Tecuta Lucia L Goodman Marianne M New Antonia A Siever Larry J LJ

Biological psychiatry 20090803 9

<h4>Background</h4>Emotional instability is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD); yet, little is understood about its underlying neural correlates. One possible contributing factor to emotional instability is a failure to adequately employ adaptive cognitive regulatory strategies such as psychological distancing.<h4>Methods</h4>To determine whether there are differences in neural dynamics underlying this control strategy between BPD patients and healthy control (HC) subjec ...[more]

PMID: 19651401

Similar Datasets

Project description:Humans engage in social interactions and have a fundamental need and motivation to establish and maintain social connections. Neuroimaging studies particularly focused on the neural substrates of social exclusion in healthy subjects (HC), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and major depression (MD). However, there is evidence regarding neural alterations also during social inclusion in BPD that we intended to elucidate in our study. Considering that patients with BPD often have comorbid MD, we investigated patients with BPD, and comorbid MD, patients with MD without BPD, and a sample of HC. By investigating these two clinical samples within one study design, we attempted to disentangle potential confounds arising by psychiatric disorder or medication and to relate neural alterations under social inclusion specifically to BPD. We investigated 48 females (15 BPD and MD, 16 MD, and 17 HC) aged between 18 and 40 years by fMRI (3T), using the established cyberball paradigm with social exclusion, inclusion, and passive watching conditions. Significant group-by-condition interaction effects (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected on cluster level) were observed within the dorsolateral (dlPFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and the precuneus. Comparisons of estimated neural activations revealed that significant interaction effects were related to a relative increase in neural activations during social inclusion in BPD. In detail, we observed a significant increase in differential (social inclusion vs. passive watching) neural activation within the dmPFC and the PCC in BPD compared to both, MD and HC. However, significant interaction effects within the dlPFC and the TPJ could not specifically be linked to BPD considering that they did not differ significantly between the two clinical groups in post-hoc comparisons. Our study supports previous results on effects of social and inclusion in BPD, and provides further evidence regarding disorder specific neural alterations in BPD for brain regions associated with self-referential and mentalizing processes during social inclusion.

Project description:Extreme emotional reactivity is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder, yet the neural-behavioral mechanisms underlying this affective instability are poorly understood. One possible contributor is diminished ability to engage the mechanism of emotional habituation. The authors tested this hypothesis by examining behavioral and neural correlates of habituation in borderline patients, healthy comparison subjects, and a psychopathological comparison group of patients with avoidant personality disorder.During fMRI scanning, borderline patients, healthy subjects, and avoidant personality disorder patients viewed novel and repeated pictures, providing valence ratings at each presentation. Statistical parametric maps of the contrasts of activation during repeated versus novel negative picture viewing were compared between groups. Psychophysiological interaction analysis was employed to examine functional connectivity differences between groups.Unlike healthy subjects, neither borderline nor avoidant personality disorder patients exhibited increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex when viewing repeated versus novel pictures. This lack of an increase in dorsal anterior cingulate activity was associated with greater affective instability in borderline patients. In addition, borderline and avoidant patients exhibited smaller increases in insula-amygdala functional connectivity than healthy subjects and, unlike healthy subjects, did not show habituation in ratings of the emotional intensity of the images. Borderline patients differed from avoidant patients in insula-ventral anterior cingulate functional connectivity during habituation.Unlike healthy subjects, borderline patients fail to habituate to negative pictures, and they differ from both healthy subjects and avoidant patients in neural activity during habituation. A failure to effectively engage emotional habituation processes may contribute to affective instability in borderline patients.

Project description:BackgroundFear of abandonment and aloneness play a key role in the clinical understanding interpersonal and attachment-specific problems in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and has been investigated in previous functional Magnet Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies. The aim of the present study was to examine how different aspects of attachment representations are processed in BPD, by using for the first time an fMRI attachment paradigm including personalized core sentences from the participants' own attachment stories. We hypothesized that BPD patients would show increased functional involvement of limbic brain regions associated with fear and pain (e.g., the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex) when presented personalized attachment relevant stimuli representing loneliness compared to healthy controls (HC).MethodsWe examined the attachment classifications of 26 female BPD patients and 26 female HC using the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP). We used an fMRI-adapted attachment paradigm to investigate the neural correlates of attachment. All participants were presented three personalized (vs. neutral) sentences extracted from their AAP attachment narrative, combined with standardized AAP pictures representing being alone (monadic) or in interactive (dyadic) attachment situations.ResultsAs expected, the classification of unresolved attachment was significantly greater in BPD compared to HC. BPD patients showed increased fMRI-activation in brain areas associated with fear, pain, and hyperarousal than HC when presented with personalized attachment-relevant alone stimuli. In particular, pictures with monadic attachment situations induced greater anterior medial cingulate cortex, anterior insula, amygdala, thalamus and superior temporal gyrus activation in the patient group.ConclusionThe results point to increased fMRI-activation in areas processing emotional distress and painful experiences in BPD patients. In particular, the emotional cascade reflecting attachment distress was evoked by combining monadic pictures, representing abandonment and aloneness, with the patients' personalized narrative material. Our results confirmed and replicated previous results that illustrate once again the high relevance of aloneness and feelings of abandonment for BPD in the context of attachment trauma. Moreover, our results support the hypothesis of hypermentalization in response to attachment distress as a core feature of social-cognitive impairment in BPD associated with common treatment implications across different therapeutic orientations.

Dataset Information

Neural correlates of the use of psychological distancing to regulate responses to negative social cues: a study of patients with borderline personality disorder.

Publications

Neural correlates of the use of psychological distancing to regulate responses to negative social cues: a study of patients with borderline personality disorder.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets