Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious and pervasive psychiatric condition with a prevalence of 1-5% among the general population. Two core symptoms of BPD are dysfunctional emotion regulation and marked impulsivity resulting in severe psychological suffering in terms of depression and anxiety as well as maladaptive impulsive acts, particularly self-harming behaviors including suicide. Recent advances in affective neuroscience of BPD combined with progress in brain imaging and neuromodulation technologies have opened new avenues for the development of innovative, brain-based, and more effective treatments for BPD.
This project aims to test the efficacy of a novel circuit-based treatment for BPD. The investigators will utilize multimodal neuroimaging Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and electroencephalogram (EEG) and BPD-, depression- and anxiety-related clinical scales to objectively measure the impact of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) treatment on overall BPD as well as depressive and anxiety symptom severity. Furthermore, a battery of cognitive tasks will be used to specifically measure the effect of TMS on the neurobehavioral indicators of impulsivity and emotion regulation.
