Brain functional abnormality in drug naïve adolescents with borderline personality disorder during self- and other-reflection

TY - JOUR

T1 - Brain functional abnormality in drug naïve adolescents with borderline personality disorder during self- and other-reflection

AU - Salgado-Pineda, Pilar

AU - Ferrer, Marc

AU - Calvo, Natalia

AU - Duque-Yemail, Juan

AU - Costa, Xavier

AU - Rue, Alex

AU - Perez-Rodriguez, Violeta

AU - Ramos-Quiroga, Josep Antoni

AU - Veciana-Verdaguer, Cristina

AU - Fuentes-Claramonte, Paola

AU - Salvador, Raymond

AU - McKenna, Peter J.

AU - Pomarol-Clotet, Edith

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025.

PY - 2025/4/23

Y1 - 2025/4/23

N2 - A disturbed sense of identity is one of the major features of borderline personality disorder (BPD), which manifests early in the course of the disorder, and is potentially examinable using functional imaging during tasks involving self-reflection. Twenty-seven medication-naïve adolescent female patients with BPD, who had no psychiatric comorbidities, and 28 matched healthy female controls underwent fMRI while answering questions either about themselves or acquaintances. Control conditions consisted of answering questions involving factual knowledge and a low-level baseline (cross fixation). When self-reflection was compared to fact processing, BPD patients exhibited reduced activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), as well as in the left parietal and calcarine cortex and the right precuneus. In contrast, other-reflection was associated with relatively lower activation in the medial frontal cortex in BPD patients, with further analysis revealing that this change reflected a failure of de-activation during the fact processing condition. There were no differences between the BPD patients and controls when self- and other-processing was examined against low-level baseline. This study provides evidence of reduced DLPFC activation during self-reflection in adolescent females with BPD, which may reflect diminished top-down cognitive control of this process, but not other-reflection in the disorder.

AB - A disturbed sense of identity is one of the major features of borderline personality disorder (BPD), which manifests early in the course of the disorder, and is potentially examinable using functional imaging during tasks involving self-reflection. Twenty-seven medication-naïve adolescent female patients with BPD, who had no psychiatric comorbidities, and 28 matched healthy female controls underwent fMRI while answering questions either about themselves or acquaintances. Control conditions consisted of answering questions involving factual knowledge and a low-level baseline (cross fixation). When self-reflection was compared to fact processing, BPD patients exhibited reduced activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), as well as in the left parietal and calcarine cortex and the right precuneus. In contrast, other-reflection was associated with relatively lower activation in the medial frontal cortex in BPD patients, with further analysis revealing that this change reflected a failure of de-activation during the fact processing condition. There were no differences between the BPD patients and controls when self- and other-processing was examined against low-level baseline. This study provides evidence of reduced DLPFC activation during self-reflection in adolescent females with BPD, which may reflect diminished top-down cognitive control of this process, but not other-reflection in the disorder.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105003306454

U2 - 10.1038/s41398-025-03368-6

DO - 10.1038/s41398-025-03368-6

M3 - Article

SN - 2158-3188

VL - 15

JO - Translational psychiatry

JF - Translational psychiatry

IS - 1

M1 - 157

ER -