ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Decision Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1583050
EEG correlates of egocentric and altercentric biases in forensic cases with borderline personality
Provisionally accepted
Vincent Rochas1*
Marie-Louise Montandon2
Cristelle Rodriguez3
Francois R HERRMANN2,4
Ariel Eytan3,4
Alan J Pegna5
Christoph M Michel6
Panteleimon Giannakopoulos3,4- 1M/EEG & Neuromod Platform, Fondation Campus Biotech, Geneva, Switzerland
- 2Department of Rehabilitation and Geriatrics, Geneva University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
- 3Division of Institutional Measures, Medical Direction, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
- 4Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
- 5School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- 6Functional Brain Mapping Lab, Department of Fundamental Neurosciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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People automatically take into account others’ perspective when judging their own (altercentric, AI) or other (egocentric, EI) divergent views. Borderline (BDL) and antisocial personality are associated with significant changes in EI and AI. Coupling the dot-perspective taking task with high-density EEG recordings, our report explores the correlates of EI and AI in cases with BDL diagnosis and court-ordered measures (BDL-COM; n=14) compared to age matched healthy controls (n=24)., Controls displayed significant activation of brain generators in inconsistent trials that was absent in BDL-COM patients. For the Self-Inconsistent stimuli (altercentric bias), controls showed increased activity in the left superior frontal gyrus between 58 and 74ms and left inferior frontal gyrus between 279 and 303ms. Similar differences were observed for Other-Inconsistent stimuli (egocentric bias) in the precentral gyri, and inferior frontal gyrus between 274 and 296ms. These observations indicate that AI involves an early activation of brain generators in central executive and mentalizing areas. EI is associated with an increased activation of the mirror neuron system based on self-other distinction. These EEG data indicate that BDL-COM patients display significant difficulties in the activation of all of the brain generators implicated in the processing of conflicting viewpoints in visual perspective taking.
Keywords: EEG, perspective taking, altercentric bias, Egocentric, Borderline
Received: 28 Apr 2025; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rochas, Montandon, Rodriguez, HERRMANN, Eytan, Pegna, Michel and Giannakopoulos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Vincent Rochas, M/EEG & Neuromod Platform, Fondation Campus Biotech, Geneva, Switzerland
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