Extinction of cognitively conditioned fear in Borderline Personality Disorder

Aims: Despite the prominent role of emotion dysregulation in theoretical accounts of BPD, so far only few imaging studies have examined emotion dysregulation in BPD. Learning to combine a previously neutral stimulus with a possible aversive event by means of verbal instruction is an everyday experience humans encounter. Symbolically acquired fear results in physiological fear responses and functional neuroimaging data comparable to the responses in classical fear conditioning. This study aims to investigate the neural underpinnings of extinction learning in female borderline patients to test the hypothesis of di…