Figure 1. Impaired Behavioral Control in the Context of Stressful Emotional Events in Borderline Personality Disorder Patients^a

^aImpaired behavioral control in the context of intense negative emotions is a core difficulty for patients with borderline personality disorder. The figure displays differences between healthy individuals and those with borderline personality disorder in activity when subjects had to refrain from pushing a button in the context of negative words relative to neutral words. Purple/blue regions reflect decreased activity in borderline personality disorder subjects, whereas yellow/orange regions reflect increased activity in borderline personality disorder subjects. Silbersweig et al. found that borderline personality disorder subjects did not display characteristically increased activity found in comparison subjects in ventral-medial regions, including the subgenual cingulate cortex (A), but rather displayed increased activity in limbic subcortical regions (B) as well as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (C). (Image courtesy of Silbersweig et al.)