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Object relations theory accounts for the tendency of people with borderline personality pathology to engage in projection and projective identification—the intolerable within is denied and attributed to the other. However, the question of how brain produces mind remains a mystery. What is happening on a neurological level when the borderline person experiences negative affects? Where does projection begin, biologically speaking?
The authors of this paper postulate that it might begin with the initial eye movements one makes when assessing facial expression. Various studies have shown that we pay attention to the eyes in particular when looking for social cues. In addition, the eyes are thought to be the most emotionally salient part of a threatening expression. It is possible, then, that a component of the borderline's bias toward negative social information, angry reactivity, and attribution of threat to others is due to a tendency to excessively focus on the other's eyes. In essence, the borderline person is “looking for” aggression that isn't there. This excessive focus could lead to hyperactivity in areas of the brain responsible for assigning meaning to emotional stimuli—in this case, negative meanings. If this focus could be modulated, the authors believe it could in turn modulate the reactive, angry responses borderline patients tend to have toward perceived threats.
Oxytocin, a neuropeptide, is known to modulate social behavior and functions in “coding” the salience of social information, attaching affect to phenomena within the amygdala. Individual and situational differences impact the effect of oxytocin administration in individuals, though overall it seems to optimize the processing of social cues. For this reason, the authors chose to study the effects of intranasal oxytocin administration on facial threat processing in borderline individuals. Groups of healthy female control subjects and borderline women were divided into groups receiving placebo or 2