Christian Schmahl

..Primitive brain systems involved in fear responsivity and survival also mediate smell, including the olfactory cortex and amygdala. The purpose of this study was to measure neural correlates of olfaction in PTSD...

..NSSI was usually preceded by a large variety of negative feelings that were reported to clearly improve with NSSI. In conclusion, therapists should anticipate a multidimensional functional spectrum when exploring motives of NSSI...

..To establish whether these findings are specific for BPD, we compared pain thresholds in patients with BPD, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bulimia nervosa, and healthy controls...

..Both groups exhibit volume reductions of the hippocampus and amygdala. Our aim was to investigate the influence of comorbid PTSD on hippocampus and amygdala volumes in patients with BPD...

..We predicted that heat stimuli in patients with BPD would activate brain areas concerned with cognitive and emotional evaluation of pain...

..This study aimed at clarifying whether central antinoceptive mechanisms discriminate BPD patients with and without co-occurrent PTSD...

..Our results suggest an association of PTSD with reduced pain sensitivity, which could be related to PTSD-related (neuro-)psychological alterations or to a pre-existing risk factor for the disorder...

..Impulsivity is a key feature of BPD and can be related to anterior cingulate cortex function...

..Our aim was to investigate the psychologic, somatosensory (pain sensitivity) and neural correlates of dissociative states in patients with these disorders...

..We suggest that stress levels and co-occurring ADHD should receive attention in future studies on impulsivity in BPD...

..The results suggest that dissociation in borderline-patients should be closely monitored and targeted during DBT. At this stage, research on treatment of dissociation (e.g., specific skills training) is warranted...

..The effects of inpatient dialectical behavior therapy seem to persist after patients returned to their usual lives...

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..These findings suggest that hypoalgesia in BPD may primarily be due to altered intracortical processing similar to certain meditative states...

..The aim of our study was to determine whether high states of dissociative experience would specifically alter emotional learning, but not declarative knowledge...

..Findings in healthy subjects indicate that painful stimulation leads to blood oxygenation level-dependent signal decreases and changes in the functional architecture of the DMN...

..However, the effects were too small to reach statistical significance. Our data provide the first estimate of the pure pharmacological antidissociative efficacy of naltrexone from a rigorously designed trial...

..0 T in which we acquire data within only the small amygdala. The purpose of this study was to determine alterations of the metabolism in the amygdala in BPD patients...

..Pain in BPD has further been observed to lead to a reduction in neural activity in the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex, which may be attributed to patients' perception of relaxation...

..As social-evaluative threat is not the main stress component of the MMST, this procedure represents a useful and complementary alternative to other established stress protocols...

..Therefore, these findings convey a good impression of the current findings from neuroimaging research in this disorder and also of the necessary next steps with regard to content and methodology...

..This makes former assumptions plausible that hypnosis and severe forms of dissociation (or conversion) may share common aetiologies...

..Dysfunction in a frontolimbic network is suggested to mediate much, if not all of the borderline symptomatology...

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..Measuring electric pain thresholds is a valid and reasonable method for larger studies...

..Several brain areas related to pain processing are implicated in PTSD. To our knowledge, no functional imaging study has discussed whether patients with PTSD experience and process pain in a different way than control subjects...

..Earlier findings in sleep EEG abnormalities in BPD may have been confounded by concomitant depressive symptoms...

..Within a relatively short time frame, improvement was found across a broad range of psychopathological features. Stability of the recovery after one month following discharge, however, was not evaluated and requires further study...

..Fixed affects analysis demonstrated that stimuli subjectively perceived as more painful resulted in increased activation of the caudal ACC, whereas less painful stimuli resulted in increased activation of the rostral ACC in both groups...

..CONCLUSIONS: These findings add further evidence for dysfunction of a network of brain regions, including anterior cingulate and visual and parietal cortex, in abuse-related PTSD...

..Current strategies are focusing on the neurobiological underpinnings of the disorder and the development and dissemination of better and more cost-effective treatments to clinicians...

..Further placebo-controlled studies with larger populations are needed to confirm this finding...

..Clinical experience suggests that people with borderline personality disorder often meet criteria for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, empirical data are sparse...

..No studies have examined neural correlates of fear conditioning and extinction in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)...

..The authors examined hippocampal and amygdalar volumes in patients with dissociative identity disorder, a disorder that has been associated with a history of severe childhood trauma...

..Most of the neuropsychologic, physiologic, endocrinologic, and neuroimaging data support the theory that a dual brain pathology, affecting prefrontal and limbic circuits, may underlie this hyperarousal-dyscontrol syndrome...