The ToMenovela - A Photograph-Based Stimulus Set for the Study of Social Cognition with High Ecological Validity.

We present the ToMenovela, a stimulus set that has been developed to provide a set of normatively rated socio-emotional stimuli showing varying amount of characters in emotionally laden interactions for experimental investigations of (i) cognitive and (ii) affective Theory of Mind (ToM), (iii) emotional reactivity, and (iv) complex emotion judgment with respect to Ekman's basic emotions (happiness, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, Ekman and Friesen, 1975). Stimuli were generated with focus on ecological validity and consist of 190 scenes depicting daily-life situations. Two or more of eight main characters with distinct biographies and personalities are depicted on each scene picture. To obtain an initial evaluation of the stimulus set and to pave the way for future studies in clinical populations, normative data on each stimulus of the set was obtained from a sample of 61 neurologically and psychiatrically healthy participants (31 female, 30 male; mean age 26.74 ± 5.84), including a visual analog scale rating of Ekman's basic emotions (happiness, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise) and free-text descriptions of the content of each scene. The ToMenovela is being developed to provide standardized material of social scenes that are available to researchers in the study of social cognition. It should facilitate experimental control while keeping ecological validity high.

A negative relationship between ventral striatal loss anticipation response and impulsivity in borderline personality disorder.

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) frequently exhibit impulsive behavior, and self-reported impulsivity is typically higher in BPD patients when compared to healthy controls. Previous functional neuroimaging studies have suggested a link between impulsivity, the ventral striatal response to reward anticipation, and prediction errors. Here we investigated the striatal neural response to monetary gain and loss anticipation and their relationship with impulsivity in 21 female BPD patients and 23 age-matched female healthy controls using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants performed a delayed monetary incentive task in which three categories of objects predicted a potential gain, loss, or neutral outcome. Impulsivity was assessed using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11). Compared to healthy controls, BPD patients exhibited significantly reduced fMRI responses of the ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens (VS/NAcc) to both reward-predicting and loss-predicting cues. BIS-11 scores showed a significant positive correlation with the VS/NAcc reward anticipation responses in healthy controls, and this correlation, while also nominally positive, failed to reach significance in BPD patients. BPD patients, on the other hand, exhibited a significantly negative correlation between ventral striatal loss anticipation responses and BIS-11 scores, whereas this correlation was significantly positive in healthy controls. Our results suggest that patients with BPD show attenuated anticipation responses in the VS/NAcc and, furthermore, that higher impulsivity in BPD patients might be related to impaired prediction of aversive outcomes.

Trait anxiety modulates fronto-limbic processing of emotional interference in borderline personality disorder.

Previous studies of cognitive alterations in borderline personality disorder (BPD) have yielded conflicting results. Given that a core feature of BPD is affective instability, which is characterized by emotional hyperreactivity and deficits in emotion regulation, it seems conceivable that short-lasting emotional distress might exert temporary detrimental effects on cognitive performance. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how task-irrelevant emotional stimuli (fearful faces) affect performance and fronto-limbic neural activity patterns during attention-demanding cognitive processing in 16 female, unmedicated BPD patients relative to 24 age-matched healthy controls. In a modified flanker task, emotionally negative, socially salient pictures (fearful vs. neutral faces) were presented as distracters in the background. Patients, but not controls, showed an atypical response pattern of the right amygdala with increased activation during emotional interference in the (difficult) incongruent flanker condition, but emotion-related amygdala deactivation in the congruent condition. A direct comparison of the emotional conditions between the two groups revealed that the strongest diagnosis-related differences could be observed in the dorsal and, to a lesser extent, also in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (dACC, rACC) where patients exhibited an increased neural response to emotional relative to neutral distracters. Moreover, in the incongruent condition, both the dACC and rACC fMRI responses during emotional interference were negatively correlated with trait anxiety in the patients, but not in the healthy controls. As higher trait anxiety was also associated with longer reaction times (RTs) in the BPD patients, we suggest that in BPD patients the ACC might mediate compensatory cognitive processes during emotional interference and that such neurocognitive compensation that can be adversely affected by high levels of anxiety.

Effects of AKAP5 Pro100Leu genotype on working memory for emotional stimuli.

Recent investigations addressing the role of the synaptic multiadaptor molecule AKAP5 in human emotion and behavior suggest that the AKAP5 Pro100Leu polymorphism (rs2230491) contributes to individual differences in affective control. Carriers of the less common Leu allele show a higher control of anger as indicated by behavioral measures and dACC brain response on emotional distracters when compared to Pro homozygotes. In the current fMRI study we used an emotional working memory task according to the n-back scheme with neutral and negative emotional faces as target stimuli. Pro homozygotes showed a performance advantage at the behavioral level and exhibited enhanced activation of the amygdala and fusiform face area during working memory for emotional faces. On the other hand, Leu carriers exhibited increased activation of the dACC during performance of the 2-back condition. Our results suggest that AKAP5 Pro100Leu effects on emotion processing might be task-dependent with Pro homozygotes showing lower control of emotional interference, but more efficient processing of task-relevant emotional stimuli.