The amygdala and the parietal cortex play a key role in the neural representation of personal space. Although the concept of personal space is clinically very relevant for borderline personality disorder (BPD), especially in affective contexts, it has not been investigated thus far with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this fMRI study, 25 female BPD patients and 25 healthy women were exposed to photos of angry, disgusted and neutral facial expressions. All stimuli were once shown as still photos, and once were zoomed-in in order to simulate intrusion into one's own personal space. Approaching faces generally provoked activation of the amygdala and the somatosensory cortex. BPD patients showed an increased activation within both regions, but only toward approaching disgusted faces. Their amygdala activation in this specific condition positively correlated with self-disgust scores. Moreover, the clinical group indicated an enhanced personal distance preference, which was associated with parietal activation. The present study revealed altered personal space processing of BPD patients, especially in situations that relate to social contexts involving disgust. Future studies should focus on the temporal stability of personal space processing during the natural course of BPD as well as during therapy.

BackgroundFindings of behavioral studies on facial emotion recognition in Parkinson’s disease (PD) are very heterogeneous. Therefore, the present investigation additionally used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to compare brain activation during emotion perception between PD patients and healthy controls.Methods and FindingsWe included 17 nonmedicated, nondemented PD patients suffering from mild to moderate symptoms and 22 healthy controls. The participants were shown pictures of facial expressions depicting disgust, fear, sadness, and anger and they answered scales for the assessment of affective traits. The patients did not report lowered intensities for the displayed target emotions, and showed a comparable rating accuracy as the control participants. The questionnaire scores did not differ between patients and controls. The fMRI data showed similar activation in both groups except for a generally stronger recruitment of somatosensory regions in the patients.ConclusionsSince somatosensory cortices are involved in the simulation of an observed emotion, which constitutes an important mechanism for emotion recognition, future studies should focus on activation changes within this region during the course of disease.

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