Early visual information processing deficit in depression with and without Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

Backward masking is a measure of early visual information processing usually abnormal in psychotic disorders. Previous studies of subjects with Borderline Personality Disorder have been inconsistent regarding their impairment or lack of impairment on backward masking. We examined visual backward masking performance in samples of unmedicated depressed patients with (n=12) and without (n=16) Borderline Personality Disorder, and healthy volunteers (n=18). Accuracy was poorer in depressed BPD patients, relative to both non-BPD depressed and healthy comparison subjects. As in previous studies, no differences in accuracy were found between non-BPD depressed patients and healthy comparison subjects. Differences in BPD subjects' accuracy were most evident at the fastest ISI and were not attributable to intercurrent psychotic symptoms. Beyond these group differences, accuracy at faster ISI's correlated with self-ratings of impulsiveness in all patients, and may be a general correlate of this trait. Poor early information processing appears to be a feature of Borderline Personality Disorder, and may play a role in the impulsive behavior that is characteristic of the disorder.

Executive functions in borderline personality disorder

“…The association of shorter processing times with action-related processes suggests that perceptual processing and response selection are unaffected in BPD. This finding conflicts with those of studies that have applied backward masking tasks and have pointed to impairments of early visual processing in BPD (Stevens et al, 2004;Keilp et al, 2007). On the one hand, this discrepancy may be due to differences in the sample characteristics: for example, Keilp et al (2007) investigated rather small clinical groups whose participants all met the diagnostic criteria for unipolar or bipolar depressive disorder.…”

“…This finding conflicts with those of studies that have applied backward masking tasks and have pointed to impairments of early visual processing in BPD (Stevens et al, 2004;Keilp et al, 2007). On the one hand, this discrepancy may be due to differences in the sample characteristics: for example, Keilp et al (2007) investigated rather small clinical groups whose participants all met the diagnostic criteria for unipolar or bipolar depressive disorder. On the other hand, backward masking tasks tap different cognitive processes than do simple reaction tasks, since they focus on the detection of stimuli with very short presentation durations (e.g., 5 ms).…”

You Don’t See What I See: Individual Differences in the Perception of Meaning from Visual Stimuli

“…Anecdotally, these can lead to seeing different things in a cloud-filled sky and appreciating particular forms of abstract art [ 1 ]. Experimentally, these variations range from slight, and perhaps random, fluctuations in performance across individuals [ 2 – 5 ], to considerable dissimilarities that can be reliably traced to broader group differences in, for example, gender [ 6 ], personality [ 7 ], culture [ 8 ], motivation [ 9 ], and the spectrum of psychosis [ 10 , 11 ]. In the work described here we use the commonplace observation of meaningful images in the clouds to construct stimuli that allow us to measure individual differences in the inclination to see something in a degraded, noisy stimulus when nothing is actually there.…”