Hyperreactivity and Impaired Habituation of Startle Amplitude During Unpleasant Pictures in Borderline but Not Schizotypal Personality Disorder: Quantifying Emotion Dysregulation.

Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by greater intensity of reactions to unpleasant emotional cues and a slower-than-normal return of these responses to baseline. Habituation is defined as decreased response to repeated stimulation. Affect-modulated startle (AMS), a translational psychophysiological approach, is mediated by the amygdala and used to study emotion processing in both humans and animals.