Inhibition errors in borderline personality disorder with psychotic-like symptoms

The aim of this study was to examine whether patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have deficits in cognitive inhibition as measured with an anti-saccade eye task similar to patients with schizophrenia (Sz). Furthermore, we investigated whether these inhibition errors were more prominent among BPD patients with psychotic-like symptoms than among BPD patients without these symptoms.An anti-saccade task was administered in 32 BPD patients (among them, 20 had with psychotic-like symptoms), 21 patients with recent onset schizophrenia (Sz), and 25 healthy controls (HC). The percentage inhibition errors in the anti-saccade task were the primary outcome variable, in addition, the percentage of anticipatory errors was measured.Sz patients showed more inhibition errors than HC and BPD (p.001 and p.05 resp.), whereas BPD patients scored in between Sz and HC. The difference with HC was significant as well (p.05). BPD patients with psychotic-like symptoms showed more inhibition errors than BPD patients without these symptoms (p.05). BPD patients showed more anticipatory errors than HC (p.001), whereas Sz patients did not (p.26).The data demonstrate that inhibition deficits, as measured with anti-saccadic eye movement task, may be characteristic among BPD patients and in a larger extent in patients with psychotic-like symptoms. This inhibition deficit was distinct from a general predisposition to response impulsively as measured by anticipatory errors, which was found in the whole group of BPD patients. Psychotic-like symptoms may be an important target dimension for future BPD research and treatment.