The wandering mind in borderline personality disorder: Instability in self- and other-related thoughts

Abstract

Diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD) include instability in identity and interpersonal relationships. Here, we probed whether instability is already present in BPD patients' thoughts about themselves and others. We tested BPD patients (N=27) and healthy controls (N=25) with a mind-wandering task that assesses content and variability of stimulus-independent self-generated thoughts. Multi-level modeling revealed that while BPD patients and healthy controls mind-wander to a similar extent, BPD patients' thoughts are colored predominantly negatively. Most importantly, although their thoughts concerned the self and others as much as in controls, they fluctuated more strongly in the degree to which their thoughts concerned themselves and others and also gave more extreme ratings. Self- and other related thoughts that were more extreme were also more negative in valence. The increased variability supports current conceptualizations of BPD and may account for the instability in identity and interpersonal relationships.

Wandering minds in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and borderline personality disorder

“…The finding of excessive MW-S in BPD compared to controls differed from a previous report which found no increase in the reported frequency of MW-S during a choice reaction time task (Kanske et al, 2016), whereas in ADHD excessive MW-S was reported during a similar attention task (Shaw and Giambra, 1993). However, this is perhaps not unexpected since we used ESM in daily life rather than during a laboratory computer task probing sustained attention and is consistent with the view that in BPD MW-S reflects rumination, rather than the core sustained attention deficit seen in ADHD.…”

“…To date, we identified two previous investigations of mind wandering in BPD. Using experience sampling (thought probes) of mind wandering during a reaction time task no differences were found in the frequency of reported mind wandering compared to controls; although BPD cases reported more negative thoughts and greater instability of mind wandering (Kanske et al, 2016). It should be noted that, Kanske and colleagues did not however distinguish between MW-D and MW-S. A second study reported higher frequency and duration of reported mind wandering in BPD cases compared to controls, using an experimenter-prompted mindfulness task (Scheibner et al, 2016).…”

Wandering Minds with Wandering Brain Networks

“…Thus, mind-wandering is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon and the DMN is the primary source [1,7,16]. In addition, dysfunction of the DMN occurs in a number of psychiatric and neurological diseases [32]; thus abnormal mind-wandering, accompanied by abnormal activity in the DMN, is characteristic of mental disorders [33][34][35][36].…”

Evidence for Depressogenic Spontaneous Thoughts and Altered Resting-State Connectivity in Adolescents With a Maltreatment History

“…We therefore used an established nondemanding choice reaction time task (CRT) that allowed spontaneous SGTs in participants. During this task, participants were probed at random time points, first, about how much they were on task, and, second, about the specific content of their thoughts, 10,24 such as if their thoughts were focused on certain temporal epochs (future or past), involved different referents (self or other), or varied in valence (negative or positive). This task is particularly useful as an objective online measure of the amount and specific content of SGTs, but also of their variability over time, as participants are asked about the SGTs repeatedly throughout the task.…”