Transdiagnostic and Disorder-specific Neural Correlates of Emotion Processing in Major Depressive Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder: Coordinate-based and Image-based Comparative Meta-Analyses.

Background: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) involve substantial impairments in negative and positive emotions processing. This meta-analysis aims to identify both transdiagnostic and disorder-specific neural abnormalities during the processing of negative and positive stimuli for MDD and BPD.

Methods: The current coordinate-based and image-based meta-analyses comprised 42 fMRI studies involving MDD (42 Negative studies vs. 22 Positive studies; 1,532 MDD patients vs. 1,481 healthy controls) and 25 involving BPD (23 Negative studies vs. 7 Positive studies; 522 BPD patients vs. 519 healthy controls).

Results: Compared to healthy controls, MDD patients exhibited hyporeactivity in left precentral gyrus during negative emotion processing, and decreased activation in left temporal lobe, insula, and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex during positive emotion processing, while BPD patients displayed hyperreactivity in left hippocampus and amygdala and hyporeactivity in right inferior frontal gyrus during negative emotion processing. Compared to BPD, MDD exhibited greater hyporeactivity in bilateral anterior cingulate cortex during negative emotion processing and in left middle temporal gyrus during positive emotion processing. The transdiagnostic hyporeactivity of BPD and MDD was mainly located in left inferior and right middle frontal gyrus during negative emotion processing.

Conclusions: Our findings highlight both distinct and transdiagnostic neural mechanisms of emotion processing for MDD and BPD.