title: Oxytocin and reduction of social threat hypersensitivity in women with borderline personality disorder.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Patients with borderline personality disorder are characterized by emotional hyperarousal with increased stress levels, anger proneness, and hostile, impulsive behaviors. They tend to ascribe anger to ambiguous facial expressions and exhibit enhanced and prolonged reactions in response to threatening social cues, associated with enhanced and prolonged amygdala responses. Because the intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin has been shown to improve facial recognition and to shift attention away from negative social information, the authors investigated whether borderline patients would benefit from oxytocin administration.
  
  
  METHODS
  In a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind group design, 40 nonmedicated, adult female patients with a current DSM-IV diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (two patients were excluded based on hormonal analyses) and 41 healthy women, matched on age, education, and IQ, took part in an emotion classification task 45 minutes after intranasal administration of 26 IU of oxytocin or placebo. Dependent variables were latencies and number or initial reflexive eye movements measured by eye tracking, manual response latencies, and blood-oxygen-level-dependent responses of the amygdala to angry and fearful compared with happy facial expressions.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Borderline patients exhibited more and faster initial fixation changes to the eyes of angry faces combined with increased amygdala activation in response to angry faces compared with the control group. These abnormal behavioral and neural patterns were normalized after oxytocin administration.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Borderline patients exhibit a hypersensitivity to social threat in early, reflexive stages of information processing. Oxytocin may decrease social threat hypersensitivity and thus reduce anger and aggressive behavior in borderline personality disorder or other psychiatric disorders with enhanced threat-driven reactive aggression.
authors: Katja
authors: K
authors: Bertsch
authors: Matthias
authors: M
authors: Gamer
authors: Brigitte
authors: B
authors: Schmidt
authors: Ilinca
authors: I
authors: Schmidinger
authors: Stephan
authors: S
authors: Walther
authors: Thorsten
authors: T
authors: Kästel
authors: Knut
authors: K
authors: Schnell
authors: Christian
authors: C
authors: Büchel
authors: Gregor
authors: G
authors: Domes
authors: Sabine C
authors: SC
authors: Herpertz
mesh_terms: D000281:Administration, Intranasal; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D000679:Amygdala / Q000187:drug effects / Q000503:physiopathology; D000786:Anger / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D001143:Arousal / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000502:physiology; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D004644:Emotions / Q000145:classification / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D010121:Oxytocin / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000187:drug effects; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010121:Oxytocin