Background: Studies in borderline personality disorder (BPD) have consistently revealed abnormalities in fronto-limbic brain regions during emotional, somatosensory and cognitive challenges. Here we investigated changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of three fronto-limbic core regions of specific importance to BPD.
Method: Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired in 20 unmedicated female BPD patients and 17 healthy controls (HC, matched for age, sex and education) during rest. The amygdala, and the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were defined as seeds to investigate RSFC patterns of a medial temporal lobe network, the salience network and default mode network. The Dissociation Experience Scale (DES), a measure of trait dissociation, was additionally used as a predictor of RSFC with these seed regions.
Results: Compared with HC, BPD patients showed a trend towards increased RSFC between the amygdala and the insula, orbitofrontal cortex and putamen. Compared with controls, patients furthermore exhibited diminished negative RSFC between the dorsal ACC and posterior cingulate cortex, a core region of the default mode network, and regions of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Last, increased negative RSFC between the ventral ACC and medial occipital regions was observed in BPD patients. DES scores were correlated with amygdala connectivity with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and fusiform gyrus.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest alterations in resting-state networks associated with processing of negative emotions, encoding of salient events, and self-referential processing in individuals with BPD compared with HC. These results shed more light on the role of abnormal brain connectivity in BPD.