Microstructural white matter alterations in borderline personality disorder: A minireview

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Psychiatry
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Borderline personality disorder (BPD) affects 1-5% of the population with complex symptoms.
• Brain imaging studies have advanced understanding of BPD pathophysiology.
• White matter (WM) deficits in BPD remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review findings from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies on BPD.
• To clarify the role of WM deficits in BPD.

Main Methods:

• Bibliographic research in PubMed until May 2019.
• Inclusion of 12 studies with 291 BPD subjects and 293 healthy controls.

Main Results:

• DTI studies show impairments in WM tracts of the prefronto-limbic system in BPD patients.
• Affected areas include frontal WM, anterior cingulate cortex, corpus callosum, and others.
• Patients with BPD exhibited reduced white matter integrity compared to controls.

Conclusions:

• BPD is characterized by selective structural connectivity alterations in prefronto-limbic areas.
• These alterations support neurobiological models of BPD involving frontal-limbic modulation.
• Disrupted WM integrity may explain BPD symptoms like emotional dysregulation and cognitive dysfunction.