Decision-making for risky gains and losses in borderline personality disorders
-
1
University of Murcia, Spain
-
2
Decision Research, United States
-
3
Hospital Reina Sofia, Spain
-
4
University of Southern California, United States
Impulsivity and other related cognitive deficits, lack of planning and a decreased sensitivity to negative consequences of behaviour, are core components of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). These deficits observed in BPD patients seem to arise from a dysfunctional frontolimbic network including the orbitofrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala, areas that also play an important role in decision-making. This research was aimed at further exploring the underlying processes mediating risky decisions in BPD. We focused on whether BPD patients were more apt to take risks when the potential for loss was present. A sample composed of 10 BPD patients and 16 healthy controls performed two risky decision making tasks that assessed decision making when considering potential gains and losses by either a) framing the decision problem (a mixed gamble) as a gain or loss (Framing Task), or b) changing the signs of the outcomes to reflect decisions involving potential gains or losses (Cups Task). Overall, patients showed increased risk-taking in the framing task. Although patients showed a framing effect, this resulted from an increased tendency to be risk-seeking for the loss frame and non risk-averse for the gain frame. In the Cups task, patients were insensitive to relative expected values between choice options when presented decisions involving potential losses, leading to suboptimal choices, but did not differ from controls when taking risks to achieve gains. We discuss these findings within the context of neuropsychiatric research that suggests abnormalities in neural structures supporting emotion in BPD. Funding: Supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, grant PSI2008-04394, and the National Science Foundation (USA), grant # SES08-20585.
Keywords:
BPD,
decision-making
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Decision Making, Reward Processing & Response Selection
Citation:
Martinez-Selva
JM,
Sanchez-Navarro
JP,
Weller
JA,
Lopez-Navarro
JM and
Bechara
A
(2011). Decision-making for risky gains and losses in borderline personality disorders.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00387
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
24 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Jose M Martinez-Selva, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain, jmselva@um.es