Biobehavioral mechanisms underlying reacitve aggression in BPD: Validation and pharmacological modulation
Final Report Abstract
In this project, we have achieved to assess behavioral correlates for identified mechanisms of reactive aggression, namely, hypersensitivity for interpersonal threat, approach rather than avoidance of interpersonal threat, emotional contagion, deficient cognitive theory of mind, and reduced anger regulation, as well as behavioral, self-report, and neural correlates of reactive aggression in a large, heterogeneous sample of patients with BPD and healthy volunteers. First results indicate elevated self-reported aggression, a rigid pattern of interpersonal behavior in the aggression paradigm, and altered prefrontal-limbic activation patterns during provocation in patients with BPD. In the second part of the project, we were able to perform a double-blind placebo-controlled challenge study in which emotion classification and approach-avoidance tendencies of patients with BPD and healthy volunteers were measured after oxytocin or placebo administration. EEG was continuously measured during the emotion classification task as well as during a brief resting state period. First results indicate a normalization of approach-avoidance tendencies by oxytocin in patients with BPD. Oxytocin however did not affect reduced heart-beat evoked potentials, a marker for the cortical representation of interoceptive signals in BPD. Data processing is still ongoing.
Publications
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(2015). A new perspective on the pathophysiology of borderline personality disorder: A model of the role of oxytocin. American Journal of Psychiatry, 172(9), 840-851
Herpertz, S. C., & Bertsch, K.
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(2015). Cortical representation of afferent bodily signals in borderline personality disorder: Neural correlates and relationship to emotional dysregulation. JAMA Psychiatry, 72(11), 1077-1086
Müller, L. E., Schulz, A., Andermann, M., Gäbel, A., Gescher, D. M., Spohn, A., . . . Bertsch, K.
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(2016). Heart rate variability in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder or borderline personality disorder: Relationship to early life maltreatment. Journal of Neural Transmission, 123(9), 1107-1118
Meyer, P.-W., Müller, L. E., Zastrow, A., Schmidinger, I., Bohus, M., Herpertz, S. C., & Bertsch, K.
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(2017). Interpersonal threat sensitivity in borderline personality disorder: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Personality Disorders, 31(5), 647-670
Bertsch, K., Krauch, M., Stopfer, K., Haeussler, K., Herpertz, S. C., & Gamer, M.
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(2018). Amygdala structure and aggressiveness in borderline personality disorder. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 268(4), 417-427
Mancke, F., Herpertz, S. C., Hirjak, D., Knies, R., & Bertsch, K.
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(2018). Behavioral and neurobiological correlates of disturbed emotion processing in borderline personality disorder. Psychopathology, 51, 76-82
Bertsch, K., Hillmann, K., & Herpertz, S. C.
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(2018). Oxytocin and Borderline Personality Disorder. In R. Hurlemann & V. Grinevich (Eds.), Behavioral Pharmacology of Neuropeptides: Oxytocin (pp. 499-514). Cham: Springer
Bertsch, K., & Herpertz, S. C.
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(2019). EEG-vigilance regulation in borderline personality disorder. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 139, 10-17
Kramer, L., Sander, C., Bertsch, K., Gescher, D. M., Cackowski, S., Hegerl, U., & Herpertz, S. C.
