This article proposes a multidimensional model of aggression in borderline personality disorder (BPD) from the perspective of the biobehavioral dimensions of affective dysregulation, impulsivity, threat hypersensitivity, and empathic functioning. It summarizes data from studies that investigated these biobehavioral dimensions using self-reports, behavioral tasks, neuroimaging, neurochemistry as well as psychophysiology, and identifies the following alterations: (a) affective dysregulation associated with prefrontal-limbic imbalance, enhanced heart rate reactivity, skin conductance, and startle response; (b) impulsivity also associated with prefrontal-limbic imbalance, central serotonergic dysfunction, more electroencephalographic slow wave activity, and reduced P300 amplitude in a 2-tone discrimination task; (c) threat hypersensitivity associated with enhanced perception of anger in ambiguous facial expressions, greater speed and number of reflexive eye movements to angry eyes (shown to be compensated by exogenous oxytocin), enhanced P100 amplitude in response to blends of happy versus angry facial expressions, and prefrontal-limbic imbalance; (d) reduced cognitive empathy associated with reduced activity in the superior temporal sulcus/gyrus and preliminary findings of lower oxytocinergic and higher vasopressinergic activity; and (e) reduced self-other differentiation associated with greater emotional simulation and hyperactivation of the somatosensory cortex. These biobehavioral dimensions can be nicely linked to conceptual terms of the alternative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5) model of BPD, and thus to a multidimensional rather than a traditional categorical approach.

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text.The thermal grill illusion is reduced in borderline personality disorder. This suggests that the deficits in pain perception in this group are of central origin.

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Understanding the association between autonomic nervous system [ANS] function and brain morphology across the lifespan provides important insights into neurovisceral mechanisms underlying health and disease. Resting‐state ANS activity, indexed by measures of heart rate [HR] and its variability [HRV] has been associated with brain morphology, particularly cortical thickness [CT]. While findings have been mixed regarding the anatomical distribution and direction of the associations, these inconsistencies may be due to sex and age differences in HR/HRV and CT. Previous studies have been limited by small sample sizes, which impede the assessment of sex differences and aging effects on the association between ANS function and CT. To overcome these limitations, 20 groups worldwide contributed data collected under similar protocols of CT assessment and HR/HRV recording to be pooled in a mega‐analysis (N = 1,218 (50.5% female), mean age 36.7 years (range: 12–87)). Findings suggest a decline in HRV as well as CT with increasing age. CT, particularly in the orbitofrontal cortex, explained additional variance in HRV, beyond the effects of aging. This pattern of results may suggest that the decline in HRV with increasing age is related to a decline in orbitofrontal CT. These effects were independent of sex and specific to HRV; with no significant association between CT and HR. Greater CT across the adult lifespan may be vital for the maintenance of healthy cardiac regulation via the ANS—or greater cardiac vagal activity as indirectly reflected in HRV may slow brain atrophy. Findings reveal an important association between CT and cardiac parasympathetic activity with implications for healthy aging and longevity that should be studied further in longitudinal research.

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Introduction Individualized treatment prediction is crucial for the development and selection of personalized psychiatric interventions. Here, we use random forest classification via pretreatment clinical and demographical (CD), functional, and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) to predict individual treatment response. Methods Before dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), 31 female patients underwent functional (three different emotion regulation tasks) and structural MRI. DBT response was predicted using CD and MRI data in previously identified anatomical regions, which have been reported to be multimodally affected in BPD. Results Amygdala and parahippocampus activation during a cognitive reappraisal task (in contrasts displaying neural activation for emotional challenge and for regulation), along with severity measures of BPD psychopathology and gray matter volume of the amygdala, provided best predictive power with neuronal hyperractivities in nonresponders. All models, except one model using CD data solely, achieved significantly better accuracy (>70.25%) than a simple all‐respond model, with sensitivity and specificity of >0.7 and >0.7, as well as positive and negative likelihood ratios of >2.74 and <0.36 each. Surprisingly, a model combining all data modalities only reached rank five of seven. Among the functional tasks, only the activation elicited by a cognitive reappraisal paradigm yielded sufficient predictive power to enter the final models. Conclusion This proof of principle study shows that it is possible to achieve good predictions of psychotherapy outcome to find the most valid predictors among numerous variables via using a random forest classification approach.

We found that DBT increased grey matter volume of brain regions that are critically implicated in emotion regulation and higher-order functions, such as mentalizing. The role of the angular gyrus for treatment response may reside in its cross-modal integrative function. These findings enhance our understanding of psychotherapy mechanisms of change and may foster the development of neurobiologically informed therapeutic interventions.

Aggression is a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Well-replicated results from the general population indicate that men engage in aggression more frequently than women. This article addresses the question of whether gender also influences aggression in BPD, and whether the neurobiological mechanisms underlying aggressive behavior differ between male and female BPD patients. Data show that most self-reports, interviews and behavioral tasks investigating samples of BPD patients do not find enhanced aggressiveness in male patients, suggesting that BPD attenuates rather than aggravates gender differences usually present in the general population. Neurobiological studies comparing BPD patients with gender-matched healthy controls, however, reveal a number of interesting gender differences: On the one hand, there are well-replicated findings of reduced amygdala and hippocampal gray matter volumes in female BPD patients, while these findings are not shared by male patients with BPD. On the other hand, only male BPD patients exhibit reduced gray matter volume of the anterior cingulate cortex, increased gray matter volume of the putamen, reduced striatal activity during an aggression task, and a more pronounced deficit in central serotonergic responsivity. These neurobiological findings point to a particular importance of impulsivity for the aggression of male BPD patients. Limitations include the need to control for confounding influences of comorbidities, particularly as male BPD patients have been consistently found to show higher percentages of aggression-predisposing comorbid disorders, such as antisocial personality disorder, than female BPD patients. In the future, studies which include systematic comparisons between females and males are warranted in order to disentangle gender differences in aggression of BPD patients with the aim of establishing gender-sensitive treatments where needed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40479-015-0028-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.