CompletedNot Applicable

Cortical Plasticity of the Tactile Mirror System in Borderline Personality Disorder

Italy71 participantsStarted 2023-09-04

Plain-language summary

People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) show alterations in the empathic abilities, which may involve the functioning of the mirror neuron system in the somatosensory domain. In the so-called Tactile Mirror System, the observation of a touch on someone else's body activates a cortical network also involved in tactile perception, including the primary somatosensory cortex. While alterations of mirror-like systems have been suggested in BPD, plasticity mechanisms within these systems are underexplored. The present study aims to shed light on the possible neurophysiological alterations within the Tactile Mirror System in people with BPD, employing a non-invasive transcranial magnetic stimulation protocol, called cross-modal paired associative stimulation (cm-PAS), to induce brain plasticity.

Who can participate

Age range18 Years – 40 Years

SexALL

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AI-rewrites the medical criteria so a patient or caregiver can understand them. Always confirm with the trial site.

Inclusion Criteria: * All participants: right handedness (Edinburgh Handedness Inventory; Oldfield, 1971) * Patients group: clinical diagnosis of BPD. The severity of the symptoms will be assessed by means of the Zanarini rating scale for BPD (ZAN-BPD, Zanarini, 2003) and the Symptoms Check-list 90 Revised (SCL-90-R, Derogatis, 1994). Depressive symptoms will be evaluated with the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II, Beck, 1988), impulsiveness with the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS, Patton, Stanford, \& Barratt, 1995), and alexithymia with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20, Bagby, Taylor, \& Parker, 1994). Moreover, interpersonal functioning will be evaluated with the Interpersonal Problems (IIP, Pilkonis, Kim, Proietti, \& Barkham, 1996), and attachment style will be assessed with the Attachment Style Questionnaire (Feeney, Noller, \& Hanrahan, 1994). Finally, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ; Bernstein \& Fink, 1998) will be administered for the assessment of traumatic experiences, and the Inventory of statements about self-injury (ISAS, Klonsky \& Glenn, 2009) for the evaluation of self-harm. Exclusion Criteria: * All participants: Contraindication to TMS (Rossi et al., 2021) * All participants: Anamnesis or evidence of any central nervous system alteration * Patients group: Comorbidity with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, according to DSM-5, and in case of unstable pharmacological therapy

What they're measuring

Visuo-tactile performance

Timeframe: Within 30 minutes before and after the cm-PAS protocol in each experimental session

Trial details

NCT IDNCT06702215

SponsorIRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli

Sponsor typeOTHER

Study typeINTERVENTIONAL

Primary completion2025-11-07