Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy
Open Access
ISSN: 2161-0487
+44 1478 350008
ISSN: 2161-0487
+44 1478 350008
Roberta Bortolla, Emanuela Roder, Pietro Ramella and Cesare Maffei
Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan
San Raffaele Hospital, Milan
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Psychol Psychother
Statement of the Problem: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is severe personality pathology with a core dysfunction characterized by emotion dysregulation, which is developed from an interaction between a physiological vulnerability to hyper-reactivity and hyper-arousal and an invalidating environment. Although clinical and self-reported data support these assumptions, physiological results still remain controversial. Some authors proposed that BPD emotional dysfunctions could be related to an abnormal activation of the vagus nerve. Consequentially, BPD patients endure in a physiological state evolved to support defensive strategies, even when the situation is not dangerous. This study aims to evaluate basal (hyper-arousal) and task-related (hyper-reactivity) physiological differences comparing BPD and healthy subjects during the exposition to dynamic emotional stimuli. Moreover, we want to explore the role of emotion dysregulation, with regard to physiological reactivity. Methodology: Self-reported emotion intensity and vagal activity (RSA) were assessed during the administration of six video clips eliciting each one a target emotion, to 14 BPD outpatients and 14 healthy subjects. Moreover, both groups completed the difficulties in emotion regulation scale. Findings: Although no significant differences in self-reported scores were found, vagal activation showed significant betweengroups differences. Our findings showed a vagal hyper-arousal state in the clinical group during the baseline condition. Moreover, significantly lower RSA amplitude in the clinical group during the whole task, even controlling for baseline level, suggested the idea of a stronger reactivity to emotional stimuli in BPD subjects. Interestingly, group physiological differences in emotional reactivity seem to be fully explained by the basal altered physiological activation and scores of self-reported emotional dysregulation. Significance: As a whole, our results support the hypothesis of a basal condition of physiological preparedness to threat and danger and the assumption of a higher reactivity in BPD, probably influenced by both the biological vulnerability and the self- reported ability in regulating emotions.
Roberta Bortolla is a PhD student at Vita Salute San Raffaele University, Italy. Her research field mainly concerns the study of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) from physiological and behavioral prospective. She is currently involved in a project studying the dysfunctional emotional processes characterizing BPD from several perspectives (e.g. visual, physiological, and subjective) in order to propose a model of BPD pathology. She has a specific interest in brain-mind models of human functioning, linking several subdomains in a coherent architecture. More specifically, she wants to explore the possibility to extend healthy brain-mind models to pathological functioning (e.g. personality pathology).