Self-other distinction in borderline personality disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) often leads to significant difficulties in interpersonal relationships. People with BPD frequently struggle to distinguish their own feelings, thoughts, and desires from those of others. This process, known as self-other distinction (SOD), is crucial for healthy social interactions. However, in individuals with BPD, this balance is often disrupted, leading to difficulties in interactions with others and conflicts in relationships. This research project investigates why people with BPD experience challenges with SOD and how stress and attachment styles may influence these difficulties. The overarching goal is to better understand the neurocognitive processes underlying SOD impairments and use this knowledge to improve treatments for individuals with BPD. The project focuses on three key objectives: 1. Researchers will use well-validated tasks to measure SOD in individuals with BPD and healthy controls (HCs), develop a new questionnaire for efficiently assessing SOD, and examine how attachment styles affect SOD performance. 2. Using a stress-inducing paradigm, the Trier Social Stress Test, researchers will investigate how acute stress affects SOD performance and whether it leads to a self- focused (egocentric) or other-focused (altercentric) bias in BPD. 3. Through brain imaging (fMRI), researchers will identify structural and functional differences in the brains of individuals with BPD compared to HCs during SOD tasks. This will be combined with a one-week diary study to assess how SOD challenges manifest in daily life. The research program promises groundbreaking new insights into BPD and its neurocognitive drivers via a combination of laboratory experiments, brain imaging, and real-life data collection. The project will also provide insights into how stress and attachment styles shape the ability to differentiate oneself from others. Ultimately, this knowledge can contribute to the development of more effective therapies for individuals with BPD, improving their social relationships and overall quality of life. This research project is a collaboration between the University of Vienna (Prof. Lamm & Dr. Pronizius), UCLouvain (Prof. Bukowski), and KU Leuven (Prof. Luyten & Dr. De Meulemeester), bringing together experts in psychology and neuroscience from Austria and Belgium.