TY - JOUR
T1 - Neural Correlates of the Use of Psychological Distancing to Regulate Responses to Negative Social Cues
T2 - A Study of Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder
AU - Koenigsberg, Harold W.
AU - Fan, Jin
AU - Ochsner, Kevin N.
AU - Liu, Xun
AU - Guise, Kevin G.
AU - Pizzarello, Scott
AU - Dorantes, Christine
AU - Guerreri, Stephanie
AU - Tecuta, Lucia
AU - Goodman, Marianne
AU - New, Antonia
AU - Siever, Larry J.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (RO1 MH077813, Principal Investigator: HWK; MH076137, Principal Investigator: KNO) and from the National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health for the Mount Sinai General Clinical Research Center (5MO1 RR00071).
PY - 2009/11/1
Y1 - 2009/11/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Cognitive reappraisal
KW - emotion
KW - emotion regulation
KW - fMRI
KW - psychological distancing
KW - social cognitive neuroscience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=70349728353&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.06.010
DO - 10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.06.010
M3 - Article
C2 - 19651401
AN - SCOPUS:70349728353
SN - 0006-3223
VL - 66
SP - 854
EP - 863
JO - Biological Psychiatry
JF - Biological Psychiatry
IS - 9
ER -