Abstract
Background.Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by instability in affective regulation that can result in a loss of cognitive control. Triggers may be neuronal responses to emotionally valenced context and/or stimuli. ‘Neuronal priming’ indexes the familiarity of stimuli, and may capture the obligatory effects of affective valence on the brain’s processing system, and how such valence mediates responses to the repeated presentation of stimuli. We investigated the effects of affective valence of stimuli on neuronal priming (i.e. changes in activation to repeated presentation of stimuli), and if these effects distinguished BPD patients from controls.Methods.Forty BPD subjects and 25 control subjects (age range: 18–44) participated in an episodic memory task during fMRI. Stimuli were presented in alternating epochs of encoding (six images of positive, negative, and neutral valence) and recognition (six images for ‘old’ v. ‘new’ recognition). Analyses focused on inter-group differences in the change in activation to repeated stimuli (presented during Encoding and Recognition).Results.Relative to controls, BPD showed greater priming (generally greater decrease from encoding to recognition) for negatively valenced stimuli. Conversely, BPD showed less priming for positively valenced stimuli (generally greater increase from encoding to recognition).Conclusion.Plausibly, the relative familiarity of negative valence to patients with BPD exerts an influence on obligatory responses to repeated stimuli leading to repetition priming of neuronal profiles. The specific effects of valence on memory and/or attention, and consequently on priming can inform the understanding of mechanisms of altered salience for affective stimuli in BPD.
Highlights
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by instability in affective regulation and self-image (Lieb, Zanarini, Schmahl, Linehan, & Bohus, 2004)
We organize the presentation of results as follows: (1) We first present results of between-group analyses associated with negative valence (BPD−ve[ENC>REC] ≠ HC−ve[ENC>REC]) (Fig. 1), followed by (2) similar analyses for positive valence (BPD+ve[ENC>REC] ≠ HC+ve[ENC>REC]) (Fig. 2). (3) These analyses were extended
In assessing inter-group differences for negative valence (BPD−ve[ENC>REC] ≠ HC−ve[ENC>REC]), multiple significant clusters were observed under the BPD−ve[ENC>REC] > HC−ve[ENC>REC] contrast. These were observed in frontal, cingulate, and motor regions including the pars triangularis, cingulum, pre-frontal cortex, and supplemental motor area. This result indicates that in BPD, the decrease in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses from the first to the second presentation of the negative stimuli was greater than that observed in HC, suggesting a sharper attenuation of the response between successive presentations of negative stimuli in BPD participants
Summary
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by instability in affective regulation and self-image (Lieb, Zanarini, Schmahl, Linehan, & Bohus, 2004). These psychological traits express themselves in abnormal functional responses and network interactions in the BPD brain (Sala et al, 2009). We investigated the effects of affective valence of stimuli on neuronal priming (i.e. changes in activation to repeated presentation of stimuli), and if these effects distinguished BPD patients from controls. BPD showed greater priming (generally greater decrease from encoding to recognition) for negatively valenced stimuli. The relative familiarity of negative valence to patients with BPD exerts an influence on obligatory responses to repeated stimuli leading to repetition priming of neuronal profiles. The specific effects of valence on memory and/or attention, and on priming can inform the understanding of mechanisms of altered salience for affective stimuli in BPD
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