REPEAT NEUROBEHAVIORAL STUDY OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY-DISORDER

Previous research has tentatively identified a large subgroup of patie nts with borderline personality disorder (BPD) with histories of devel opmental or acquired brain insults. Similarly, these studies have demo nstrated a possible biological correlation between the severity of BPD and the number of previous brain insults. The possibility of frontal system cognitive dysfunction in BPD has been raised. This single-blind , case-control study of BPD showed that 13 of 24 subjects with BPD had suffered a brain insult. Correlations between neurodevelopmental/acqu ired brain injury score and the diagnostic interview for borderline (D IB) score (r = 0.47), and between frontal system cognitive functioning and DIB score (r = -0.37) were seen. Neurocognitive testing and compa rison with a cohort of subjects with traumatic brain injury (TBI) show ed a pattern of similar cognitive functioning between the 2 groups, wi th the only differences on individual tests being in the direction of worse functioning in the group with BPD on 2 tasks. These results supp ort the hypotheses described above. The main limitation reflects the l ow numbers of subjects.