TY - JOUR
T1 - Borderline Personality Traits Are Not Correlated With Brain Structure in Two Large Samples
AU - Baranger, David A.A.
AU - Few, Lauren R.
AU - Sheinbein, Daniel H.
AU - Agrawal, Arpana
AU - Oltmanns, Thomas F.
AU - Knodt, Annchen R.
AU - Barch, Deanna M.
AU - Hariri, Ahmad R.
AU - Bogdan, Ryan
N1 - Funding Information:
Data for this study were provided by the Human Connectome Project WU-Minn Consortium (Grant No. 1U54MH091657; principal investigators, David Van Essen and Kamil Ugurbil), funded by the 16 institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, as well as by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University. The Duke Neurogenetics Study is supported by Duke University and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) (Grant No. DA033369). DAAB was supported by the NIH (Grant No. T32-GM008151) and National Science Foundation (Grant No. DGE-1143954). LRF was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA023693). AA was supported by the NIDA (Grant No. 5K02DA32573). ARH receives additional support from the NIDA (Grant No. DA031579) and National Institute on Aging (Grant No. AG049789). RB was supported by the Klingenstein Third Generation Research and NIH (Grant Nos. R01-AG045231, R01-HD083614, and R01-AG052564). Portions of these data were presented in an oral talk at the 71st Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, May 12 to 14, 2016, Atlanta, Georgia. This article was published as a preprint on PsyArXiv: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ku8b5. The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
Funding Information:
Data for this study were provided by the Human Connectome Project WU-Minn Consortium (Grant No. 1U54MH091657; principal investigators, David Van Essen and Kamil Ugurbil), funded by the 16 institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, as well as by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University. The Duke Neurogenetics Study is supported by Duke University and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) (Grant No. DA033369 ). DAAB was supported by the NIH (Grant No. T32-GM008151 ) and National Science Foundation (Grant No. DGE-1143954 ). LRF was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA023693). AA was supported by the NIDA (Grant No. 5K02DA32573 ). ARH receives additional support from the NIDA (Grant No. DA031579 ) and National Institute on Aging (Grant No. AG049789 ). RB was supported by the Klingenstein Third Generation Research and NIH (Grant Nos. R01-AG045231 , R01-HD083614 , and R01-AG052564 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Society of Biological Psychiatry
PY - 2020/7
Y1 - 2020/7
N2 - Background: Borderline personality disorder is associated with severe psychiatric presentations and has been linked to variability in brain structure. Dimensional models of borderline personality traits (BPTs) have become influential; however, associations between BPTs and brain structure remain poorly understood. Methods: We tested whether BPTs are associated with regional cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volumes (n = 152 brain structure metrics) in data from the Duke Neurogenetics Study (n = 1299) and Human Connectome Project (n = 1099). Positive control analyses tested whether BPTs are associated with related behaviors (e.g., suicidal thoughts and behaviors, psychiatric diagnoses) and experiences (e.g., adverse childhood experiences). Results: While BPTs were robustly associated with all positive control measures, they were not significantly associated with any brain structure metrics in the Duke Neurogenetics Study or Human Connectome Project, or in a meta-analysis of both samples. The strongest findings from the meta-analysis showed a positive association between BPTs and volumes of the left ventral diencephalon and thalamus (p values < .005 uncorrected, p values > .1 false discovery rate–corrected). Contrasting high and low BPT decile groups (n = 552) revealed no false discovery rate–significant associations with brain structure. Conclusions: We find replicable evidence that BPTs are not associated with brain structure despite being correlated with independent behavioral measures. Prior reports linking brain morphology to borderline personality disorder may be driven by factors other than traits (e.g., severe presentations, comorbid conditions, severe childhood adversity, or medication) or reflect false positives. The etiology or consequences of BPTs may not be attributable to brain structure measured via magnetic resonance imaging. Future studies of BPTs will require much larger sample sizes to detect these very small effects.
AB - Background: Borderline personality disorder is associated with severe psychiatric presentations and has been linked to variability in brain structure. Dimensional models of borderline personality traits (BPTs) have become influential; however, associations between BPTs and brain structure remain poorly understood. Methods: We tested whether BPTs are associated with regional cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volumes (n = 152 brain structure metrics) in data from the Duke Neurogenetics Study (n = 1299) and Human Connectome Project (n = 1099). Positive control analyses tested whether BPTs are associated with related behaviors (e.g., suicidal thoughts and behaviors, psychiatric diagnoses) and experiences (e.g., adverse childhood experiences). Results: While BPTs were robustly associated with all positive control measures, they were not significantly associated with any brain structure metrics in the Duke Neurogenetics Study or Human Connectome Project, or in a meta-analysis of both samples. The strongest findings from the meta-analysis showed a positive association between BPTs and volumes of the left ventral diencephalon and thalamus (p values < .005 uncorrected, p values > .1 false discovery rate–corrected). Contrasting high and low BPT decile groups (n = 552) revealed no false discovery rate–significant associations with brain structure. Conclusions: We find replicable evidence that BPTs are not associated with brain structure despite being correlated with independent behavioral measures. Prior reports linking brain morphology to borderline personality disorder may be driven by factors other than traits (e.g., severe presentations, comorbid conditions, severe childhood adversity, or medication) or reflect false positives. The etiology or consequences of BPTs may not be attributable to brain structure measured via magnetic resonance imaging. Future studies of BPTs will require much larger sample sizes to detect these very small effects.
KW - Alcohol
KW - Borderline personality
KW - Brain structure
KW - Impulsivity
KW - Personality trait
KW - Suicidal thoughts
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083318108&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.bpsc.2020.02.006
DO - 10.1016/j.bpsc.2020.02.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 32312691
AN - SCOPUS:85083318108
SN - 2451-9022
VL - 5
SP - 669
EP - 677
JO - Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
JF - Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
IS - 7
ER -