Bertsch Katja, Krauch Marlene, Stopfer Katharina, Haeussler Katrin, Herpertz Sabine C, Gamer Matthias
Department of General Psychiatry, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Heidelberg.
J Pers Disord. 2017 Oct;31(5):647-670. doi: 10.1521/pedi_2017_31_273. Epub 2017 Jan 10.
Threat sensitivity is a prominent predictor of interpersonal dysfunctions in borderline personality disorder (BPD), leading to intense, aversive feelings of threat and eventually dysfunctional behaviors, such as aggression. In the present study, BPD patients and healthy volunteers classified angry, fearful, neutral, and happy faces presented for 150 ms or 5,000 ms to investigate initial saccades and facial scanning. Patients more often wrongly identified anger, responded slower to all faces, and made faster saccades towards the eyes of briefly presented neutral faces and slower saccades away from fearful eyes compared with healthy volunteers. Latency of initial saccades and fixation duration correlated negatively with the patients' aggressiveness. Supporting previous results, BPD patients did not experience general deficits in facial emotion processing, but a specific hypersensitivity for and deficits in detailed evaluation of threat cues, which was particularly enhanced in aggressive patients. Interventions might benefit from relocating attention towards positive information and detailed evaluation of social cues.
威胁敏感性是边缘型人格障碍（BPD）人际功能障碍的一个显著预测指标，会导致强烈的、厌恶的威胁感，并最终引发功能失调行为，如攻击行为。在本研究中，BPD患者和健康志愿者对呈现150毫秒或5000毫秒的愤怒、恐惧、中性和快乐面孔进行分类，以研究初始眼跳和面部扫描情况。与健康志愿者相比，患者更常错误识别愤怒表情，对所有面孔的反应更慢，对短暂呈现的中性面孔的眼睛进行眼跳的速度更快，而从恐惧眼睛移开的眼跳速度更慢。初始眼跳潜伏期和注视持续时间与患者的攻击性呈负相关。支持先前的结果，BPD患者在面部情绪处理方面没有普遍缺陷，但对威胁线索的详细评估存在特定的超敏反应和缺陷，这在攻击性患者中尤为明显。干预措施可能会受益于将注意力重新导向积极信息和对社交线索的详细评估。
