Impaired impulse inhibition of emotional stimuli in patients with borderline personality disorder

Effect of emotional stimulus on response inhibition in people with mild cognitive impairment: an event-related potential study

Background

A few studies are emerging to explore the issue of how aging promotes emotional response inhibition. However, there is a lack of empirical study concerning the impact of pathological cognitive impairment on emotional response inhibition. The present study investigated the effect of emotion on response inhibition in people with mild cognitive impairment, the stage of cognitive impairment before dementia.

Methods

We used two emotional stop-signal tasks to explore whether the dual competition framework considering limited cognitive resources could explain the relationship between emotion and response inhibition in mild cognitive impairment.

Results

The results showed that negative emotions prolonged N2 latency. The Go trial accuracy was reduced in the high-arousal negative conditions and the stop-signal reaction time was prolonged under high-arousal conditions. This study also verified impaired response inhibition in mild cognitive impairment and found that negative emotions prolonged P3 latency in mild cognitive impairment.

Conclusion

Emotional information interferes with response inhibition in mild cognitive impairment populations, possibly because emotional information captures more attentional resources, thus interfering with response inhibition that relies on common-pool resources.

Meta-analysis of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and its short forms: A two-part study

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is the most used self-report questionnaire to assess deficits in emotion regulation (ER), composed of 6 dimensions and 36 items. Many studies have evaluated its factor structure, not always confirming the original results, and proposed different factor models. A possible way to try to identify the dimensionality of the DERS could be through a meta-analysis with structural equation models (MASEM) of its factor structure. The MASEM indicated that a six-factor model with 32 items (DERS-32) was the most suitable to represent the dimensionality of the DERS (χ2 = 2095.96, df = 449, p < .001; root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.024, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.023-0.025; comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.97; Tucker Lewis index [TLI] = 0.96; standardized root mean squared residual [SRMR] = 0.04). This result was also confirmed by a confirmatory factor analysis (χ2 = 3229.67, df = 449, p < 0.001; RMSEA = 0.075, 95% CI: 0.073-0.078; CFI = 0.94; TLI = 0.93; SRMR = 0.05) on a new sample (1092 participants; mean age: 28.28, SD = 5.82 years) recruited from the Italian population. Analyses and results from this sample are reported in the second study of this work. The DERS-32 showed satisfactory internal consistency (i.e., ordinal α, Molenaar Sijtsma statistic, and latent class reliability coefficient) for all its dimensions and correctly categorized individuals with probable borderline symptomatology. In conclusion, the DERS-32 has demonstrated to be the best model for the DERS among all the others considered in this work, as well as a reliable tool to assess deficits in ER.

The impact of emotional stimuli on response inhibition in an inpatient and day-hospital patient psychosomatic cohort

Objectives

To correctly recognize and respond to your counterpart's emotion is essential for a successful get-together. To ensure this, emotional processes and inhibitory control are linked and interact with each other. However, this interaction can be altered in several mental disorders. In a group of psychosomatic patients, we investigated possible differences in the response inhibition between neutral and emotional stimuli and whether a psychosomatic inpatient and day-hospital patient treatment influences response inhibition profiles.

Methods

One hundred and one patients, diagnosed with different psychiatric diagnoses (77 women, 41.43 ± 13.13 years), completed an emotional stop-signal task (ESST) and an impulsive behavior scale upon admission in an inpatient and day-hospital patient treatment on a psychosomatic ward (T0) and at discharge (T1). Patients with depressive disorders completed the test again after 1 year (follow-up measurement T2, n = 22). Emotional stimuli were angry and neutral faces. Stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) and stop-signal delay (SSD) were calculated as the main behavioral parameters.

Results

We found a significantly higher SSRT for neutral than angry faces at both admission (8.538 ms, p < 0.001) and discharge (11.142 ms, p < 0.001), with a matching higher SSD for angry than neutral faces at both timepoints (T0: 8.360 ms, p < 0.001, T1: (6.950 ms, p < 0.001). The SSRT for angry faces significantly decreased after treatment (-8.485 ms, p = 0.0110). For neutral faces, the decrease failed to reach significance (-5.881 ms, p = 0.250). A significant decrease in SSRT for neutral faces in patients with depressive disorders was found 1 year after discharge compared with admission (-19.040 ms, p = 0.0380).

Conclusion

Our data demonstrate a decreased response inhibition for neutral compared with emotional stimuli and an improved response inhibition for angry faces after discharge in a psychosomatic inpatient and day-hospital patient cohort. Additionally, patients with depressive disorders displayed a significantly better response inhibition for neutral faces 1 year after discharge compared with the baseline measurement. With this study, we provide more evidence for altered emotional response inhibition in different mental disorders and a hint that psychosomatic inpatient and day-hospital patient treatment may help to normalize it, even if the effects remained small and it needs further research to prove causality.

Neural correlates of impulsivity in bipolar disorder: A systematic review and clinical implications

Impulsivity is a common feature of bipolar disorder (BD) with ramifications for functional impairment and premature mortality. This PRISMA-guided systematic review aims to integrate findings on the neurocircuitry associated with impulsivity in BD. We searched for functional neuroimaging studies that examined rapid-response impulsivity and choice impulsivity using the Go/No-Go Task, Stop-Signal Task, and Delay Discounting Task. Findings from 33 studies were synthesized with an emphasis on the effect of mood state of the sample and affective salience of the task. Results suggest trait-like brain activation abnormalities in regions implicated in impulsivity that persist across mood states. During rapid-response inhibition, BD exhibit under-activation of key frontal, insular, parietal, cingulate, and thalamic regions, but over-activation of these regions when the task involves emotional stimuli. Delay discounting tasks with functional neuroimaging in BD are lacking, but hyperactivity of orbitofrontal and striatal regions associated with reward hypersensitivity may be related to difficulty delaying gratification. We propose a working model of neurocircuitry dysfunction underlying behavioral impulsivity in BD. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.

Hemodynamic activity in the limbic system predicts reoffending in women

Previous research (Aharoni et al., 2013, 2014) found that hemodynamic activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) during error monitoring predicted non-violent felony rearrest in men released from prison. This article reports an extension of the Aharoni et al. (2013, 2014) model in a sample of women released from state prison (n = 248). Replicating aspects of prior work, error monitoring activity in the dACC, as well as psychopathy scores and age at release, predicted non-violent felony rearrest in women. Sex differences in the directionality of dACC activity were observed-high error monitoring activity predicted rearrest in women, whereas prior work found low error monitoring activity predicted rearrest in men. As in prior analyses, the ability of the dACC to predict rearrest outcomes declines with more generalized outcomes (i.e., general felony). Implications for future research and clinical and forensic risk assessment are discussed.