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Investigating visuo-tactile mirror properties in borderline personality disorder: A TMS-EEG study
Agnese Zazio1, Cora Miranda Lanza1, Antonietta Stango1
1Neurophysiology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli, Brescia, Italy.
Objectives:
Patients with borderline personality disorder (pw-BPD) have decreased levels of cognitive empathy, which may be subtended by mirror-like mechanisms in the somatosensory cortices, i.e., the Tactile Mirror System (TaMS). Here, we aimed to shed light on the TaMS and empathic deficits in pw-BPD focusing on connectivity, using transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG).
Methods:
After study preregistration, we collected self-report measures of empathic abilities, behavioral performance in a visuo-tactile spatial congruency task investigating TaMS activity, and TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs) from 20 pw-BPD and 20 healthy controls. TMS was delivered over the right primary somatosensory cortex (S1) during touch observation and real touch delivery.
Results:
Pw-BPD reported significantly lower levels of cognitive empathy than controls and made significantly more errors in reporting the side of real touches during touch observation. Moreover, pw-BPD presented an altered connectivity pattern from S1-TEPs during touch perception and touch observation, in the last case without differences between human- and object-directed touches.
Conclusions:
The results do not support a specific impairment of TaMS in pw-BPD, but reveal significant behavioral and connectivity alterations within the somatosensory network during touch processing.
Significance:
The present findings temper the proposed role of the TaMS in BPD, while still highlighting the involvement of somatosensory network alterations.
