Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN
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J Psychiatry Neurosci · Mar 2014
Smaller stress-sensitive hippocampal subfields in women with borderline personality disorder without posttraumatic stress disorder.
Animal and human studies have suggested that hippocampal subfields are differentially vulnerable to stress, but subfield volume has not been investigated in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Based on the putative role of stressful life events as vulnerability factors for BPD, we hypothesized that patients with BPD would exhibit reduced volumes for the stress-sensitive dentate gyrus (DG) and the cornu ammonis (CA) 3 subfields volumes, and that these volumes would be associated with traumatic childhood experiences. ⋯ The volumes of stress-sensitive hippocampal subfields are reduced in women with BPD without PTSD. However, the degree to which childhood trauma is responsible for these changes is unclear.