Background: Current biological concepts of borderline personality disorder (BPD) emphasize the interference of emotional hyperarousal and cognitive functions. A prototypical example is episodic memory. Pre-clinical investigations of emotion-episodic memory interactions have shown specific retrograde and anterograde episodic memory changes in response to emotional stimuli. These changes are amygdala dependent and vary as a function of emotional arousal and valence.
Method: To determine whether there is amygdala hyper-responsiveness to emotional stimuli as the underlying pathological substrate of cognitive dysfunction in BPD, 16 unmedicated female patients with BPD were tested on the behavioural indices of emotion-induced amnesia and hypermnesia established in 16 healthy controls.
Results: BPD patients displayed enhanced retrograde and anterograde amnesia in response to presentation of negative stimuli, while positive stimuli elicited no episodic memory-modulating effects.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that an amygdala hyper-responsiveness to negative stimuli may serve as a crucial aetiological contributor to emotion-induced cognitive dysfunction in BPD.