Poster #67 - Frontal EEG asymmetry in adolescents with borderline personality disorder

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - Interdisciplinary Section

Integrative Statement

Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a debilitating mental illness thought to result from complex interactions between a person’s biology (i.e., genetics, physiology) and environment (Crowell, et al. 2009). The core feature of BPD is impairment in emotion regulation (Crowell, et al. 2009; Jovev et al., 2014). Frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry (FEA) has been studied as both a state and trait marker of emotion regulation (Forbes, et al., 2006). Different FEA patterns have been found to be suggestive of certain vulnerabilities and resiliencies. Greater relative left FEA is associated with approach behaviors and positive affect, while greater relative right FEA is associated with avoidance behaviors and internalizing symptoms (Coan et al., 2004; Forbes et al., 2006). FEA in BPD has received little attention, especially in adolescent populations (Flasbeck et al., 2017; Popkirov et al., 2018). Understanding FEA patterns in adolescents with BPD is important, as FEA could provide valuable information about biological stress vulnerability markers useful for diagnostic clarification. Here we examined whether adolescents with BDP were distinguishable from healthy controls on resting baseline FEA measures.

Method: Adolescents aged 12-18 years (Mage=15; females=75%) were recruited from an outpatient mental health clinic (n=18) and from a university birth register (n=14) to obtain healthy controls without psychiatric diagnoses. BPD was diagnosed using the the Child Interview for Borderline Personality Disorder (Zanarini, 2003). Resting EEG was recorded for three minutes with eyes open and three minutes with eyes closed using a 129-channel dense array net. Medial (F3 and F4) and dorsolateral (F7, F8) FEA sites were analyzed. FEA scores were calculated as the difference of the natural log transformed alpha power (8–13 Hz); F4-F3 and F8-F7.

Results: Corresponding electrode sites were highly correlated across eyes open and eyes closed conditions (r = .87 to .92, p < .01). One-way ANCOVAs were conducted to determine if there were any differences between the BPD and control groups on FEA, while controlling for age and gender. There were significant associations between groups on FEA at the dorsolateral sites for both eyes open (F(1, 28) = 6.95, p =.013, partial eta-squared =.199) and eyes closed (F(1, 28) = 6.28, p = .018, partial eta-squared =.183); the BPD group (n =18) showed greater relative right activity, while the healthy control group (n =14) displayed greater relative left activity. There was a significant association between groups on asymmetry scores at the medial sites, but only for eyes closed (F(1, 28) = 4.49, p = .043, partial eta-squared =.138); the BPD group exhibited greater relative right activity and the healthy control group showed greater relative left activity at the medial site.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that FEA patterns differ between adolescents with BPD and healthy controls, such that those with BPD show patterns indicative of certain biological vulnerabilities. This is not without caveats, as results also indicated that age, gender, and condition type effects on results overall.

Authors

• Victoria E. Stead, McMaster University
  Presenting Author

• Lisa Dyce, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Khrista Boylan, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ryan J. Van Lieshout, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Louis Schmidt, McMaster University
  Non-Presenting Author