Behavioural mimicry and loneliness in borderline personality disorder.

Interpersonal problems together with feelings of intense loneliness constitute a core symptom domain in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Mimicry is one social behaviour that serves the forming of social affiliation and building a sense of belonging. In the present study, we investigated whether behavioural mimicry is altered in BPD and whether it is linked to the patient's feeling of loneliness. Individuals with BPD (N = 26) and healthy participants (HC, N = 25) performed a finger tapping task with a congruent or incongruent finger movement displayed preceding the presentation of the task relevant stimulus. Additional trials showing an immobile hand were used as a control condition. Mimicry strength was estimated as response facilitation after congruent and response interference after incongruent cues. Both HC and BPD patients showed facilitated responses after congruent finger movements. Only BPD patients exhibited interference by incongruent cues. The lonelier the BPD patients felt, the weaker was the interference of the incongruent cues. In contrast, interference increased with the level of loneliness in the HC group. Behavioural mimicry was increased in BPD. However, this effect was less pronounced in those BPD patients who reported the highest levels of loneliness. Our findings emphasize that mimicry is a complex construct and only some of the involved processes are altered in BPD. Future studies must further disentangle the contribution of cognitive and social cognitive processes, address a potential causality in the link between loneliness and mimicry in BPD, and relate alterations of mimicry to interpersonal dysfunction during every-day life.

Hauschild S ，Winter D ，Thome J ，Liebke L ，Schmahl C ，Bohus M ，Lis S ... -  《-》

Loneliness, social networks, and social functioning in borderline personality disorder.

Persistent loneliness is often reported by patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, empirical studies investigating this aspect of BPD psychopathology are sparse. Studies from social psychology revealed that social isolation and low social functioning contribute to loneliness, that is, the subjective feeling of being alone. The aim of the present study was to contribute to the understanding of loneliness in BPD by investigating its relation to social isolation and functioning in different domains of life. Subjective experience of loneliness was measured in 80 women (40 BPD patients, 40 healthy controls) with the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Social isolation and social functioning were assessed with the Social Network Inventory and the Social Functioning Scale. In addition, we assessed global functioning with the Global Assessment of Functioning. BPD patients reported stronger feelings of loneliness compared to healthy participants. In general, the level of loneliness was linked to network size, social engagement, and prosocial behavior. Diversity of social networks and functioning in the domain of interpersonal communication were associated with the level of loneliness only in BPD. A reduced variety of roles in social life together with impairments in interpersonal communication were particularly relevant for the experience of loneliness in BPD, suggesting an indirect path to target this psychopathological feature in therapeutic interventions. However, both social isolation and social functioning were not sufficient to explain the severely increased loneliness experienced by these patients, stressing the need for further investigation of determinants of loneliness in this clinical population. (PsycINFO Database Record

Liebke L ，Bungert M ，Thome J ，Hauschild S ，Gescher DM ，Schmahl C ，Bohus M ，Lis S ... -  《-》

Confidence in facial emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder.

Dysfunctions of social-cognitive processes such as the recognition of emotions have been discussed to contribute to the severe impairments of interpersonal functioning in borderline personality disorder (BPD). By investigating how patients with BPD experience the intensity of different emotions in a facial expression and how confident they are in their own judgments, the current study aimed at identifying subtle alterations of emotion processing in BPD. Female patients with BPD (N = 36) and 36 healthy controls were presented with faces that displayed low-intense anger and happiness or ambiguous expressions of anger and happiness blends. Subjects were asked to rate (a) the intensity of anger and happiness in each facial expression and (b) their confidence in their judgments. Patients with BPD rated the intensity of happiness in happy faces lower than did controls, but did not differ in regard to the assessment of angry or ambiguous facial stimuli or the rating of anger. They reported lower confidence in their judgments, which was particularly pronounced for the assessment of happy facial expressions. The reduced rating of happiness was linked to higher state anger, whereas the reduced confidence in the assessment of happy faces was related to stronger feelings of loneliness and the expectation of social rejection. Our findings suggest alterations in the processing of positive social stimuli that affect both the experience of the emotional intensity and the confidence subjects experience during their assessment. The link to loneliness and social rejection sensitivity points to the necessity to target these alterations in psychotherapeutical interventions.

Thome J ，Liebke L ，Bungert M ，Schmahl C ，Domes G ，Bohus M ，Lis S ... -  《-》

Measuring the shadows: A systematic review of chronic emptiness in borderline personality disorder.

Miller CE ，Townsend ML ，Day NJS ，Grenyer BFS ... -  《PLoS One》

Women with borderline personality disorder do not show altered BOLD responses during response inhibition.

Impulsivity is central to borderline personality disorder (BPD). Response inhibition, addressing the ability to suppress or stop actions, is one aspect of behavioral impulse control which is frequently used to assess impulsivity. BPD patients display deficits in response inhibition under stress condition or negative emotions. We assessed whether response inhibition and its neural underpinnings are impaired in BPD when tested in an emotionally neutral setting and when co-morbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is excluded. To this end, we studied response inhibition in unmedicated BPD patients and healthy controls (HC) in two independent samples using functional magnetic resonance imaging during Simon-, Go/nogo-, and Stopsignal tasks. BPD patients and HC did not differ significantly in their performance in the Go/nogo and the Stopsignal tasks. Response interference in the Simon task was increased in BPD patients in one sample, but this could not be replicated in the second sample. In both samples, no significant differences in brain activation patterns during any of the tasks were present while the neural impulse control network was robustly activated during the inhibition tasks in both groups. Our results provide evidence that under emotionally neutral conditions response inhibition is not impaired in patients with BPD without co-occurring ADHD.

van Eijk J ，Sebastian A ，Krause-Utz A ，Cackowski S ，Demirakca T ，Biedermann SV ，Lieb K ，Bohus M ，Schmahl C ，Ende G ，Tüscher O ... -  《-》