Abstract
Background
Heightened amygdala response to threatening cues has been repeatedly observed in borderline
personality disorder (BPD). A previous report linked hyperactivation to deficient
amygdala habituation to repeated stimuli, but the biological underpinnings are incompletely
understood.
Methods
We examined a sample of 120 patients with BPD and 115 healthy control subjects with
a well-established functional magnetic resonance imaging emotional face processing
task to replicate the previously reported amygdala habituation deficit in BPD and
probed this neural phenotype for associations with symptom severity and early social
risk exposure.
Results
Our results confirm a significant reduction in amygdala habituation to repeated negative
stimuli in BPD (pFWE = .015, peak-level familywise error [FWE] corrected for region of interest). Post
hoc comparison and regression analysis did not suggest a role for BPD clinical state
(pFWE > .56) or symptom severity (pFWE > .45) for this phenotype. Furthermore, deficient amygdala habituation was significantly
related to increased exposure to adverse childhood experiences (pFWE = .013, region of interest corrected).
Conclusions
Our data replicate a prior report on deficient amygdala habituation in BPD and link
this neural phenotype to early adversity, a well-established social environmental
risk factor for emotion dysregulation and psychiatric illness.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 19, 2019
Accepted:
June 9,
2019
Received in revised form:
May 20,
2019
Received:
March 20,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Society of Biological Psychiatry.
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- Keep the Change: Embracing Variability as a Path to Richer Theoretical Models of Borderline Personality DisorderBiological PsychiatryVol. 86Issue 12
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