Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by instability in affective regulation that can result in a loss of cognitive control. Triggers may be neuronal responses to emotionally valenced context and/or stimuli. ‘Neuronal priming’ indexes the familiarity of stimuli, and may capture the obligatory effects of affective valence on the brain's processing system, and how such valence mediates responses to the repeated presentation of stimuli. We investigated the effects of affective valence of stimuli on neuronal priming (i.e. changes in activation to repeated presentation of stimuli), and if these effects distinguished BPD patients from controls.

Forty BPD subjects and 25 control subjects (age range: 18–44) participated in an episodic memory task during fMRI. Stimuli were presented in alternating epochs of encoding (six images of positive, negative, and neutral valence) and recognition (six images for ‘old’ v. ‘new’ recognition). Analyses focused on inter-group differences in the change in activation to repeated stimuli (presented during Encoding and Recognition).

Relative to controls, BPD showed greater priming (generally greater decrease from encoding to recognition) for negatively valenced stimuli. Conversely, BPD showed less priming for positively valenced stimuli (generally greater increase from encoding to recognition).

Plausibly, the relative familiarity of negative valence to patients with BPD exerts an influence on obligatory responses to repeated stimuli leading to repetition priming of neuronal profiles. The specific effects of valence on memory and/or attention, and consequently on priming can inform the understanding of mechanisms of altered salience for affective stimuli in BPD.

边缘性人格障碍（BPD）的特点是情感调节不稳定，可能导致认知控制丧失。触发因素可能是神经元对情绪化背景和/或刺激的反应。 “神经元启动”反映了刺激的熟悉程度，并且可以捕捉情感效价对大脑处理系统的必然影响，以及这种效价如何介导对刺激重复呈现的反应。我们研究了刺激的情感效价对神经元启动（即刺激重复呈现的激活变化）的影响，以及这些影响是否能够将 BPD 患者与对照组区分开来。

40 名 BPD 受试者和 25 名对照受试者（年龄范围：18-44）在功能磁共振成像期间参与了情景记忆任务。刺激以编码（正价、负价和中性价的六幅图像）和识别（“旧”与“新”识别的六幅图像）的交替时期呈现。分析侧重于重复刺激激活变化的组间差异（在编码和识别期间呈现）。

相对于对照组，BPD 对负价刺激表现出更大的启动（通常从编码到识别的减少更大）。相反，BPD 显示出对正价刺激的启动较少（通常从编码到识别的增加更大）。

似乎，边缘性人格障碍患者对负价的相对熟悉程度会影响对重复刺激的强制性反应，从而导致神经元特征的重复启动。效价对记忆和/或注意力的具体影响，以及由此对启动的具体影响，可以帮助我们理解 BPD 中情感刺激的显着性改变的机制。