Background
Excessive emotional responding is considered to be a hallmark of borderline personality
disorder (BPD). The affect-modulated startle response is a reliable indicator of emotional
processing of stimuli. The aim of this study was to examine emotional processing in
BPD patients (n = 27) and healthy control subjects (n = 21).
Methods
Participants viewed an intermixed series of unpleasant, borderline-salient (e.g.,
“hate”), and neutral (e.g., “view”) words and were instructed to think about the meaning
of the word for them personally while eyeblink responses were assessed.
Results
The BPD patients exhibited larger startle eyeblink during unpleasant but not neutral
words, indicating exaggerated physiological affect. This finding remained significant
when we controlled for comorbid diagnoses, including generalized anxiety disorder
and post-traumatic stress disorder. Greater symptom severity was associated with greater
affective-startle difference scores (unpleasant-neutral).
Conclusions
Consistent with the symptom of affective dysregulation, these results suggest an abnormality
in the processing of unpleasant emotional stimuli by BPD patients.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 29, 2007
Accepted:
October 5,
2006
Received in revised form:
August 10,
2006
Received:
March 2,
2006
Identification
Copyright
© 2007 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
