Declarative and procedural memory consolidation during sleep in patients with borderline personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by changes in subjective and objective measures of sleep quality. As recent findings point to the importance of sleep in memory consolidation, sleep-related memory consolidation was investigated in 15 female BPD patients (mean age 26.1 ± 6.1 years) and 15 female healthy controls (mean age 25.6 ± 6.8 years). Before and after the study night, declarative and procedural memory performance was tested by a paired associate list and a mirror tracing task. Subjective sleep quality was assessed by a sleep questionnaire, objective sleep quality was measured by a portable sleep recording device. During the study night the restorative value of sleep was significantly reduced in BPD patients (p < 0.001), while objective sleep quality showed a trend for longer REM sleep duration (p = 0.054). No significant differences were found regarding overnight performance improvement in the declarative and procedural memory tasks. Present findings suggest that declarative and procedural memory consolidation during sleep is intact in BPD patients.