fMRI studies of brain changes induced by Borderline Personality Disorder treatment

What is it about?

In tandem with a better informed neurobiological model of mental illness, psychiatry has been progressively shaped into its current state of clinical neuroscience. The traditional dichotomy of organic versus endogenous mental disorders has been replaced by the growing recognition that all changes in mental processes are accompanied by changes in structures or functions of the brain (Kandel, 1998). In this view, all psychiatric interventions are deemed to have a biopsychosocial nature, whereby medications in addition to their effect on the brain have a psychological effect, and psychotherapies beyond their psychological effects may alter the brain. The potential to study mechanisms behind treatment processes have amassed vast neuroimaging data on therapy-induced brain plasticity mediating clinical improvement across a host of psychiatric disorders . Drawn together, majority of these studies have reported similar brain changes after psychotherapy and medication. Neuroimaging literature has recently begun to address neural mechanisms driving cerebral reorganization of specific circuits linked to post treatment amelioration of symptoms in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Herein present review sheds a critical light on all here-to-date fMRI findings of brain changes in BPD patients following a treatment with psychotherapy or drugs.

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Why is it important?

Understanding how various treatments achieve their therapeutic effects on neural functioning will not only advance the empirical status of evidence- based treatments, but might also contribute to resolving some of the existing controversies over BPD treatment.

Perspectives