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Hyperscanning identifies neural differences in borderline personality disorder

Hyperscanning may be useful in identifying neural biomarkers of borderline personality disorder, according to recent findings.

“At the neural level, results of functional [MRI] studies point to a dysregulation of the amygdala, including a failure to habituate to affective stimuli, and a hyperreactivity of the insular cortex,” Edda Bilek, PhD, of University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany, and colleagues wrote. “Limbic dysregulation is accompanied by lower engagement of prefrontal regions, which may underlie patients’ difficulties in regulating emotional states. However, identification of the neural mechanisms underlying disturbed social functioning beyond affective dysregulation remains elusive, not least because of the challenges of studying naturalistic social interactions using neuroimaging.”

To determine utility of recent advancements in two-person human social interaction for evaluating interaction difficulties in borderline personality disorder, researchers examined cross-brain information flow among pairs of individuals with and without borderline personality disorder. Pairs included a participant with borderline personality disorder (n = 23) or in remission for 2 years (n = 17), a healthy control (n = 20) or a second healthy control. Participants completed a joint attention task during functional MRI.

“A measure of cross-brain neural coupling was computed following previously published work to indicate synchronized flow between right temporoparietal junction networks (previously shown to host neural coupling abilities in health),” the researchers wrote.

Neural coupling was associated with disorder state (P = .007). Pairs of healthy controls exhibited synchronized neural responses, while pairs of participants with borderline personality disorder and a healthy control exhibited significantly lower neural coupling (P = .009).

Neural coupling did not differ between pairs of participants with remitted borderline personality disorder and healthy controls and pairs of healthy controls.

Neural coupling among participants with borderline personality disorder was significantly associated with childhood adversity (P = .03).

“To my knowledge, this finding reveals for the first time the altered brain coupling of individuals with [borderline personality disorder] during real-time social interactions. Joint attention is an important cognitive process that emerges during infancy with infant-parent bonding, forming an important basis for proper social interactions throughout life,” Michael J. Minzenberg, MD, of Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an accompanying editorial. “These findings point a way forward, both conceptually and methodologically, to illuminating the neural circuit dynamics that underpin relational dysfunction in [borderline personality disorder]. These clinical neuroscience measures also have potential as biomarkers of responses to treatments (which could be either biomedical or psychosocial) that target this clinical phenomenology, which confers much of the distress and public health effects associated with this condition.” – by Amanda Oldt

Disclosure: Bilek and Minzenberg report no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the study for a full list of relevant financial disclosures.