Cognitive Dysfunction in the Addictions (CDiA): A Neuron to Neighbourhood Collaborative Research Program on Executive Dysfunction and Functional Outcomes in Outpatients Seeking Treatment for Addiction.

Background: Substance use disorders (SUDs) are pressing global public health problems. Executive functions (EFs) are prominently featured in mechanistic models of addiction. However, there remain significant gaps in our understanding of EFs in SUDs, including the dimensional relationships of EFs to underlying neural circuits, molecular biomarkers, disorder heterogeneity, and functional ability.

Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation to acutely reduce emotional vulnerability and improve emotional regulation in borderline personality disorder (tVNS-BPD): study protocol for a randomized, single-blind, sham-controlled trial.

Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is considered a disorder of emotion regulation resulting from the expression of a biologically determined emotional vulnerability (that is, heightened sensitivity to emotion, increased emotional intensity/reactivity, and a slow return to emotional baseline) combined with exposure to invalidating environments. Vagal tone has been associated with activity in cortical regions involved in emotion regulation and a lower resting state of vagal tone has been observed in BPD patients relative to healthy controls. Non-invasive transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) has been shown to reduce temper outbursts in adults with Prader-Willi Syndrome, to enhance recognition of emotions in healthy students, and to improve depressive and anxiety symptoms.

Borderline personality disorder stigma: Examining the effects of diagnostic disclosure, behavior, and gender as sources of stigma in the general population.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe mental disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of emotional and behavioral dysregulation. Dysfunction and distress may be compounded by stigmatizing beliefs held by members of the community. There is a lack of research focusing on stigmatizing beliefs about BPD held by the general population.

Perception and memory-based representations of facial emotions: Associations with personality functioning, affective states and recognition abilities.

Personality traits and affective states are associated with biases in facial emotion perception. However, the precise personality impairments and affective states that underlie these biases remain largely unknown. To investigate how relevant factors influence facial emotion perception and recollection, Experiment 1 employed an image reconstruction approach in which community-dwelling adults (N = 89) rated the similarity of pairs of facial expressions, including those recalled from memory.

Pretreatment cognitive performance is associated with differential self-harm outcomes in 6 . 12-months of dialectical behavior therapy for borderline personality disorder.

Background: Recent findings suggest that brief dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for borderline personality disorder is effective for reducing self-harm, but it remains unknown which patients are likely to improve in brief 12 months of DBT. Research is needed to identify patient characteristics that moderate outcomes. Here, we characterized changes in cognition across brief DBT (DBT-6) a standard 12-month course (DBT-12) and examined whether cognition predicted self-harm outcomes in each arm.

GABAergic signaling in alcohol use disorder and withdrawal: pathological involvement and therapeutic potential.

Alcohol is one of the most widely used substances. Alcohol use accounts for 5.1% of the global disease burden, contributes substantially to societal and economic costs, and leads to approximately 3 million global deaths yearly.

Executive functions and behavioral economic demand for cannabis among young adults: Indirect associations with cannabis consumption and cannabis use disorder.

Behavioral economic demand for cannabis is robustly associated with cannabis consumption and cannabis use disorder (CUD). However, few studies have examined the processes underlying individual differences in the relative valuation of cannabis (i.e.

Modeling relations between event-related potential factors and broader versus narrower dimensions of externalizing psychopathology.

The organization of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) model provides unique opportunities to evaluate whether neural risk measures operate as indicators of broader latent liabilities (e.g., externalizing proneness) or narrower expressions (e.

Acute Effect of Physical Exercise on Negative Affect in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Pilot Study.

Background: Physical exercise is an evidence-based treatment to reduce symptoms and negative affect in several psychiatric disorders, including depressive, anxiety, and psychotic disorders. However, the effect of physical exercise on negative affect in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) has not yet been investigated. In this pilot study, we tested the safety, acceptability, and potential acute effects on negative affect of a single session of aerobic physical exercise in adults with BPD.

The transdiagnostic relationship of cumulative lifetime stress with memory, the hippocampus, and personality psychopathology.

Stress has a detrimental impact on memory, the hippocampus, and psychological health. Psychopathology research on stress has centered mainly on psychiatric diagnoses rather than symptom dimensions, and less attention has been given to the neurobiological factors through which stress might be translated into psychopathology. The present work investigates the transdiagnostic relationship of cumulative stress with episodic memory and the hippocampus (both structure and function) and explores the extent to which stress mediates the relationship between personality psychopathology and hippocampal size and activation.

Improving treatment outcomes for borderline personality disorder: what can we learn from biomarker studies of psychotherapy?

Purpose Of Review: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe and common psychiatric disorder and though evidence-based psychotherapies are effective, rates of treatment nonresponse are as high as 50%. Treatment studies may benefit from interdisciplinary approaches from neuroscience and genetics research that could generate novel insights into treatment mechanisms and tailoring interventions to the individual.

Recent Findings: We provide a timely update to the small but growing body of literature investigating neurobiological and epigenetic changes and using biomarkers to predict outcomes from evidence-based psychotherapies for BPD.

Medial prefrontal activity during self-other judgments is modulated by relationship need fulfillment.

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays an important role in representing semantic self-knowledge. Studies comparing semantic self-judgments with judgments of close others suggest that interpersonal closeness may influence the degree to which the MPFC differentiates self and other. We used optical neuroimaging to examine if support for competence, relatedness, and autonomy from relationship partners moderates MPFC activity during a personality judgment task.

Interpersonal traits and the neural representations of cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex.

Adaptive interpersonal functioning relies on the effectiveness of behavioral and neural systems involved in cognitive control. Whether different subcomponents of cognitive control and their neural representations are associated with distinctive interpersonal dispositions has yet to be determined. The present study investigated the relationships between prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation associated with two subcomponents of cognitive control and individual differences in interpersonally relevant traits and facets within the Five-Factor Model of personality.

Executive functioning in adults with borderline personality disorder and first-degree biological relatives.

Objectives: Behavioural dysregulation is a heritable core symptom domain in borderline personality disorder (BPD) that is likely influenced by the integrity of executive functions (EFs). However, the extent to which familial risk for BPD confers decrement to EFs has yet to be comprehensively studied.

Methods: In this family study, probands with BPD ( = 73), first-degree biological relatives ( = 65), and healthy controls without psychiatric diagnoses ( = 77) were assessed in abstraction, attentional vigilance, working memory, cognitive flexibility, interference resolution, planning, problem solving, and response inhibition.

Stressed, sick, and sad: Neuroendoimmune pathways between subjective lifetime stress and depression.

Disruptions in stress-sensitive biological systems, notably the immune system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, are strongly implicated in depression, and disturbances in these neuroendoimmune systems could reflect potential pathways through which experiences of stress are translated into depression. To characterize the links between stress and depression, the present study investigated whether neuroendoimmune activity mediates the relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms in 59 medically healthy adult females with varying levels of depression. Consistent with hypotheses, both greater perceived stress and higher concentrations of the proinflammatory immune marker, interleukin-6 (IL-6), were associated with greater depressive symptoms.

Dimensional personality impairment is associated with disruptions in intrinsic intralimbic functional connectivity.

Background: Recently proposed alternative dimensional models of personality disorder (PD) place the severity of impairments in self and interpersonal functioning at the core of personality pathology. However, associations of these impairments with disturbances in social, cognitive, and affective brain networks remain uninvestigated.

Methods: The present study examined patterns of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in a sample of 74 age- and sex-matched participants (45 inpatients with PD and 29 healthy controls).

Facial Emotion Perception in Families Affected With Borderline Personality Disorder.

Emotion perception biases may precipitate problematic interpersonal interactions in families affected with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and lead to conflictual relationships. In the present study, the authors investigated the familial aggregation of facial emotion recognition biases for neutral, happy, sad, fearful, and angry expressions in probands with BPD ( = 89), first-degree biological relatives ( = 67), and healthy controls ( = 87). Relatives showed comparable accuracy and response times to controls in recognizing negative emotions in aggregate and most discrete emotions.

Facial Emotion Perception in Borderline Personality Disorder: Differential Neural Activation to Ambiguous and Threatening Expressions and Links to Impairments in Self and Interpersonal Functioning.

Background: Many individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) perceive emotional expressions in faces intended to convey no emotion and display a heightened sensitivity to facial expressions conveying threat, such as fear. In BPD, the amygdala activates in response to ambiguous and threatening facial expressions, although the differential sensitivity of this brain region to higher and lower intensities of fearful expressions and the relationship of this neural activity to personality impairments have not yet been investigated.

Methods: In the present study, we examined brain activation during an implicit facial emotion task with neutral faces and fearful expressions displayed at 50% and 100% intensity in patients with BPD (n=45) and healthy controls (HC; n=25).

Neurophysiological biomarkers of response inhibition and the familial risk for borderline personality disorder.

Understanding of the biological factors that run in families affected with borderline personality disorder (BPD) is limited. The authors investigated the familial aggregation of neurophysiological biomarkers of response inhibition in the first-degree biological relatives of probands with BPD and associations with psychiatric diagnosis and impulsive traits. In the present study, psychiatric diagnoses and impulsive traits were measured in BPD probands (n = 86), psychiatrically affected and non-affected relatives (n = 60) and controls (n = 83).

Neurobiology and the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology: progress toward ontogenetically informed and clinically useful nosology .

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is an empirical structural model of psychological symptoms formulated to improve the reliability and validity of clinical assessment. Neurobiology can inform assessments of early risk and intervention strategies, and the HiTOP model has greater potential to interface with neurobiological measures than traditional categorical diagnoses given its enhanced reliability. However, one complication is that observed biological correlates of clinical symptoms can reflect various factors, ranging from dispositional risk to consequences of psychopathology.