No abstract

The amygdala and the parietal cortex play a key role in the neural representation of personal space. Although the concept of personal space is clinically very relevant for borderline personality disorder (BPD), especially in affective contexts, it has not been investigated thus far with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this fMRI study, 25 female BPD patients and 25 healthy women were exposed to photos of angry, disgusted and neutral facial expressions. All stimuli were once shown as still photos, and once were zoomed-in in order to simulate intrusion into one's own personal space. Approaching faces generally provoked activation of the amygdala and the somatosensory cortex. BPD patients showed an increased activation within both regions, but only toward approaching disgusted faces. Their amygdala activation in this specific condition positively correlated with self-disgust scores. Moreover, the clinical group indicated an enhanced personal distance preference, which was associated with parietal activation. The present study revealed altered personal space processing of BPD patients, especially in situations that relate to social contexts involving disgust. Future studies should focus on the temporal stability of personal space processing during the natural course of BPD as well as during therapy.

No abstract

This symptom provocation study on spider phobia investigated sources of late event-related potentials (ERPs) using sLORETA (standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography). Twenty-five phobic female patients and 20 non-phobic controls were confronted with phobia-relevant, generally fear-inducing, disgust-inducing and affectively neutral pictures while an electroencephalogram was recorded. Mean amplitudes of ERPs were extracted in the time windows 340–500 ms (P300) and 550–770 ms (late positive potential, LPP). Phobics showed enhanced P300 and LPP amplitudes in response to spider pictures relative to controls. Sources were mainly located in areas engaged in visuo-attentional processing (occipital and parietal regions, ventral visual pathway). Moreover, there were sources in areas which are crucial for emotional processing and the representations of aversive bodily states (cingulate cortex, insula). Further sources were located in premotor areas reflecting the priming of flight behaviour. Our findings are in good accordance with existing brain imaging studies and underline that source localization is a useful alternative for identifying phobia-relevant cortical regions.