Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy
Open Access
ISSN: 2161-0487
+44 1478 350008
ISSN: 2161-0487
+44 1478 350008
Roberta Bortolla, Giulia Calesella, Francesca Corocher, Nicolaja Girone and Cesare Maffei
Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Italy
San Raffaele Hospital, Italy
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Psychol Psychother
Statement of the Problem: According to Linehan�s biosocial model, borderline personality disorder (BPD) presents a core pathological domain characterized by emotion dysregulation, resulting from continuous transactions between a biological emotional vulnerability and an invalidating environment. BPD biological vulnerability is manifested by heightened sensitivity and hyper-reactivity to emotional stimuli, and a slow return to emotional baseline. Up to now, Linehan�s model is well supported by several self- reported measures, whereas psychophysiological studies show mixed results. Moreover, no studies took in consideration the role of the visual processing of emotional cues on emotional activation in BPD subjects. In order to test what processes underlie the emotional difficulties characterizing BPD, this study aims to measure subjective, physiological and visual responses to emotional static cues comparing BPD subjects to controls. Methodology: Self-reported (arousal, valence and dominance), EDA and eye-tracking data were collected in 12 BPD and 12 control female subjects, during the administration of 36 emotional pictures with different arousal and valence levels. Findings: Eye-tracking data did not reveal quantitative between groups differences except for a higher number of fixation in BPD sample for neutral pictures, during the first 5 seconds of visual processing. However, qualitative differences were found between the two groups. In line with other studies, our results show that Linehan�s biosocial BPD model is only partially supported by physiological data. According to EDA data, BPD patients seems to be characterized by an emotional hypersensitivity, that is not related to a basal hyper-arousal but which is manifested by hyper-activation to neutral cues. Finally, while control subjects progressively reduce their physiological activation during the task, BPD subjects maintain their arousal, supporting the hypothesis of a slow return to emotional baseline. More studies are needed to deepen the emotional processing of BPD patients that encompasses the subjective, physiological and visual evaluation of the emotional cues.
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).