Altered attributional style in Borderline Personality Disorder.

<p>ASF-E results on internality (INT), stability (STAB) and globality (GLOB) of attributions for positive and negative events in healthy controls (HC) and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). (*) p<.10, p**<.01, *** p<.001.</p

Results of the repeated measures ANOVA of word valence ratings with group (healthy controls, Borderline Personality Disorder patients), valence (negative, neutral, positive) and reference (article, self-reference, other-reference).

<p>Results of the repeated measures ANOVA of word valence ratings with group (healthy controls, Borderline Personality Disorder patients), valence (negative, neutral, positive) and reference (article, self-reference, other-reference).</p

Correlations between self-referential appraisal bias and attributional style.

<p>Healthy controls (HC) and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) differ in correlations of valence ratings referred to the self in comparison to others and internal, stable and global attributions of negative events for positive and neutral nouns.</p

Demographic and clinical variables in healthy control participants (HC) and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

<p>Demographic and clinical variables in healthy control participants (HC) and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).</p

Word appraisal depending on referential context and word valence.

<p>Valence ratings of nouns depending on valence and referential context for healthy controls (HC) and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). (*) p<.10, p**<.01, *** p<.001.</p

Rating scores in the word valence judgment task and performance in the memory tasks in healthy control participants (HC) and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

<p>Rating scores in the word valence judgment task and performance in the memory tasks in healthy control participants (HC) and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).</p

Pain Processing after Social Exclusion and Its Relation to Rejection Sensitivity in Borderline Personality Disorder

<div><p>Objective</p><p>There is a general agreement that physical pain serves as an alarm signal for the prevention of and reaction to physical harm. It has recently been hypothesized that “social pain,” as induced by social rejection or abandonment, may rely on comparable, phylogenetically old brain structures. As plausible as this theory may sound, scientific evidence for this idea is sparse. This study therefore attempts to link both types of pain directly. We studied patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) because BPD is characterized by opposing alterations in physical and social pain; hyposensitivity to physical pain is associated with hypersensitivity to social pain, as indicated by an enhanced rejection sensitivity.</p><p>Method</p><p>Twenty unmedicated female BPD patients and 20 healthy participants (HC, matched for age and education) played a virtual ball-tossing game (cyberball), with the conditions for exclusion, inclusion, and a control condition with predefined game rules. Each cyberball block was followed by a temperature stimulus (with a subjective pain intensity of 60% in half the cases). The cerebral responses were measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The Adult Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire was used to assess rejection sensitivity.</p><p>Results</p><p>Higher temperature heat stimuli had to be applied to BPD patients relative to HCs to reach a comparable subjective experience of painfulness in both groups, which suggested a general hyposensitivity to pain in BPD patients. Social exclusion led to a subjectively reported hypersensitivity to physical pain in both groups that was accompanied by an enhanced activation in the anterior insula and the thalamus. In BPD, physical pain processing after exclusion was additionally linked to enhanced posterior insula activation. After inclusion, BPD patients showed reduced amygdala activation during pain in comparison with HC. In BPD patients, higher rejection sensitivity was associated with lower activation differences during pain processing following social exclusion and inclusion in the insula and in the amygdala.</p><p>Discussion</p><p>Despite the similar behavioral effects in both groups, BPD patients differed from HC in their neural processing of physical pain depending on the preceding social situation. Rejection sensitivity further modulated the impact of social exclusion on neural pain processing in BPD, but not in healthy controls.</p></div

Summary of rm ANOVAs testing US-E separate for each experimental phase.

<p>Intervention groups are compared to placebo condition, respectively.</p

Summary of rm ANOVAs testing FPS separate for each experimental phase.

<p>Intervention groups are compared to placebo condition, respectively.</p

Details of the experimental design.

<p>a) Schematic illustration of the experimental design b) A conditioning trial of a reinforced stimulus presentation (stimulus duration 8s (within the first 7s US expectancy rating), startle probe 7s after CS onset, US 500ms after startle probe onset (electric shock for 2ms with an individually determined intensity).</p