EEG-vigilance differences between patients with borderline personality disorder, patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and healthy controls

The regulation of brain activation, as assessed with the EEG, is a state modulated trait. A decline to lowered EEG-vigilance states has been found to be associated with emotional instability in older studies, but has not been systematically studied in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Twenty unmedicated BPD patients were compared to 20 unmedicated patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as well as 20 healthy controls concerning their EEG-vigilance regulation over a 5-min period assessed with an algorithm classifying every artefact-free 2-s EEG segment into the EEG-vigilance state (A1–A3, B (=non-A)). If the alpha power was posterior more than 55% of the whole alpha power (anterior + posterior) in the artefact-free EEG-segments, that segment was marked as A1, if it was anterior more than 55% of the whole alpha power, as A3. For A2 the following rule was defined: Posterior or anterior alpha between 50 and 55% of the whole alpha power. BPD patients showed significantly lower rates of EEG-vigilance state A compared to OCD patients, indicating a lowered EEG-vigilance. All three groups showed a decrease in the rate of EEG-vigilance state A over the 5 min recording period in line with a lowering of vigilance. The study provides evidence for a less stable regulation of EEG-vigilance in BPD compared to OCD patients and is in line with concepts postulating that the behavioural pattern with sensation seeking and impulsivity in BPD has a compensatory and autoregulatory function to stabilize activation of the CNS.

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