News

09.10.2024
 

We've all experienced moments of assuming others share our emotions or beliefs. This ability to distinguish between self and others—self-other...

25.09.2024
 

We had so much joy presenting our work during the ESSPD congress in Antwerp, Belgium. Being surrounded by great colleagues is what truly matters.

30.07.2024
 

27TH – 28TH NOVEMBER 2024 BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

23.05.2024
 

Henryk and Ekaterina represented our team during the ESCAN 2024.

15.05.2024
 

Revolutionizing Clinical Psychology through Big Team Science! A pitch by Ekaterina.

09.05.2024
 

Symposium accepted!

Summary of the Project

Problems in interpersonal relationships are a key feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Specifically, individuals with BPD struggle to tease apart their feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and desires from the mental states of others.

During social interaction, individuals are prone to automatically mirror the bodily posture of their counterparts and reflect their thoughts, beliefs and emotions, with the goal to better understand what another person is feeling or thinking. Yet, humans also have the complementary ability to disentangle self- from other-related mental representations, a process called self-other distinction (SOD).

The current research proposal combines multicenter experimental and diary studies with a brain-imaging approach in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the roots of the typical problems with SOD distinction in BPD. We will investigate the role of (interpersonal) stress in BPD patients' difficulties with SOD, both in the lab and in everyday life.

On the neural level, we will investigate both functional and structural differences between BPD patients and healthy controls, such as whether we can find group differences in their brain structure and neural activations during tasks involving SOD.

The combined evidence from different studies in this project will be used to refine theoretical models of self-other distinction in order to optimize treatment for these individuals.