Individual differences in socioaffective skills influence the neural bases of fear processing: The case of alexithymia

Human Brain Mapping

Volumn 31, Issue 10, 2010, Pages 1469-1481

  Pouga, Lydia ^a   Berthoz, Sylvie ^b   De Gelder, Beatrice ^c   Grèzes, Julie ^a  

^a ECOLE NORMALE SUPÉRIEURE   (France)

^b INSTITUT MUTUALISTE MONTSOURIS   (France)

^c TILBURG UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

Alexithymia; Body expressions; Emotional regulation; Fear; FMRI

Indexed keywords

ALEXITHYMIA; AMYGDALOID NUCLEUS; ARTICLE; AUTOREGULATION; CINGULATE GYRUS; CLINICAL ARTICLE; CONTROLLED STUDY; CORRELATION ANALYSIS; EMOTIONAL DISORDER; EMOTIONALITY; FEAR; FEMALE; FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; HUMAN; MALE; NERVE CELL NETWORK; PERCEPTION; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; STIMULUS;

AFFECTIVE SYMPTOMS; FEAR; FEMALE; HUMANS; INDIVIDUALITY; MALE; PHOTIC STIMULATION; PSYCHOMOTOR PERFORMANCE; QUESTIONNAIRES; REACTION TIME; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 78349295714     PISSN: 10659471     EISSN: 10970193     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20953     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. Adolphs R, Tranel D (1999): Preferences for visual stimuli following amygdala damage. J Cogn Neurosci 11: 610-616.
2. Adolphs R, Tranel D, Damasio H, Damasio AR (1994): Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature 372: 669-672.
3. Adolphs R, Tranel D, Damasio H, Damasio AR (1995): Fear and the human amygdala. J Neurosci 15: 5879-5891.
4. Adolphs R, Tranel D, Damasio H (2001): Emotion recognition from faces and prosody following temporal lobectomy. Neuropsychology 15: 396-404.
5. Amaral DG (2003): The amygdala, social behavior, and danger detection. Ann NY Acad Sci 1000: 337-347.
6. Amaral DG, Price JL (1984): Amygdalo-cortical projections in the monkey (Macaca fascicularis). J Comp Neurol 230: 496.
7. Amodio DM, Frith CD (2006): Meeting of minds: The medial frontal cortex and social cognition. Nat Rev Neurosci 7: 268-277.
8. Avendano C, Price JL, Amaral DG (1983): Evidence for an amygdaloid projection to premotor cortex but not to motor cortex in the monkey. Brain Res 264: 111-117.
9. Barbas H, Ghashghaei H, Dombrowski SM, Rempel-Clower NL (1999): Medial prefrontal cortices are unified by common connections with superior temporal cortices and distinguished by input from memory-related areas in the rhesus monkey. J Comp Neurol 410: 343-367.
10. Bermond B, Vorst HC, Vingerhoets AJ, Gerritsen W (1999): The Amsterdam Alexithymia Scale: Its psychometric values and correlations with other personality traits. Psychother Psychosom 68: 241-251.
11. Berthoz S, Ouhayoun B, Parage N, Kirzenbaum M, Bourgey M, Allilaire JF (2000): Etude préliminaire de validation française de l'échelle de niveaux de conscience émotionnelle chez des patients déprimés et des contrôles. [Preliminary study for french validation of the levels of emotional awareness scale on depressed patients and controls]. Ann Med-Psychol 158: 665-672.
12. Berthoz S, Artiges E, Van de Moortele P-F, Poline JB, Rouquette S, Consoli SM, Martino JL (2002): Effect of impaired recognition and expression of emotions on frontocingulate cortices: An fMRI study of men with alexithymia. Am J Psychiatry 159: 961-967.
13. Blanchard DC, Blanchard RJ (1972): Innate and conditioned reactions to threat in rats with amygdaloid lesions. J Comp Physiol Psychol 81: 281-290.
14. Bruchon-Schweitzer M, Paulhan I (1993): Manuel Français de l'Echelle d'Anxiété-Trait et d'Anxiété-Etat de. Paris: Spielberger.
15. Bush G, Luu P, Posner MI (2000): Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex. Trends Cogn Sci 4: 222.
16. Bylsma LM, Morris BH, Rottenberg J (2008): A meta-analysis of emotional reactivity in major depressive disorder. Clin Psychol Rev 28: 676-691.
17. Calder AJ, Young AW, Rowland D, Perrett DI, Hodges JR, Etcoff NL (1996): Facial emotion recognition after bilateral amygdala damage: Differentially severe impairment of fear. Cogn Neuropsychol 13: 699-745.
18. Canli T, Zhao Z, Brewer J, Gabrieli JDE, Cahill L (2000): Event-related activation in the human amygdala associates with later memory for individual emotional experience. J Neurosci 20: 99RC.
19. Carr L, Iacoboni M, Dubeau MC, Mazziotta JC, Lenzi GL (2003): Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: A relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100: 5497-502.
20. Collet L, Cotraux J (1986): Inventaire abrégé de la dépression de Beck (13 items). Etude de validité concurrente avec les échelles de Hamilton et de ralentissement de Widlöcher. Encephale 12: 77-79.
21. Darwin C (1872): The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.
22. de Gelder B, Snyder J, Greve D, Gerard G, Hadjikhani N (2004): Fear fosters flight: A mechanism for fear contagion when perceiving emotion expressed by a whole body. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101: 16701-16706.
23. Deborde A-S, Berthoz S, Wallier JM, Fermanian J, Falissard B, Jeammet P, Corcos M (2008): The Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire Cutoff Scores: A study in eating-disorder and control subjects. Psychopathology 41: 43-49.
24. diPellegrino G, Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G (1992): Understanding motor events: A neurophysiological study. Exp Brain Res 91: 176-180.
25. Duvernoy HM (1999): The Human Brain. Surface, Three-Dimensional Sectional Anatomy with MRI, and Blood Supply. Vienna: Springer-Verlag.
26. Eichmann M, Kugel H, Suslow T (2008): Difficulty identifying feelings and automatic activation in the fusiform gyrus in response to facial emotion. Percept Motor Skills 107: 915-922.
27. Eickhoff SB, Stephan KE, Mohlberg H, Grefkes C, Fink GR, Amunts K, Zilles K (2005): A new SPM toolbox for combining probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps and functional imaging data. NeuroImage 25: 1325-1335.
28. Fogassi L, Gallese V, Fadiga L, Rizzolatti G (1998): Neurons responding to the sight of goal directed hand/arm actions in the parietal area PF (7b) of the macaque monkey. Soc Neurosci Abstr 24: 257.
29. Frewen PA, Lanius RA, Dozois DJ, Neufeld RWJ, Pain C, Hopper JW, Densmore M, Stevens TK (2008): Clinical and neural correlates of alexithymia in posttraumatic stress disorder. Ann NY Acad Sci 1071: 397-400.
30. Frijda NH (1986): The Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
31. Gallese V, Keysers C, Rizzolatti G (2004): A unifying view of the basis of social cognition. Trends Cogn Sci 8: 396-403.
32. Garavan H, Pendergrass CA, Cara J, Ross TJ, Stein EA, Risinger RC (2001): Amygdala response to both positively and negatively valenced stimuli. Neuroreport 12: 2779-2783.
33. Grafton ST, Arbib MA, Fadiga L, Rizzolatti G (1996): Localization of grasp representations in humans by positron emission tomography. II. Observation compared with imagination. Exp Brain Res 112: 103-111.
34. Graziano MS, Cooke DF (2006): Parieto-Frontal Interactions, Personal Space, and Defensive Behavior. Neuropsychologia 44: 845-859.
35. Grèzes J, Decety J (2001): Functional anatomy of execution, mental simulation, observation, and verb generation of actions: A meta-analysis. Human Brain Mapp 12: 1-19.
36. Grèzes J, Armony JL, Rowe J, Passingham RE (2003): Activations related to "mirror" and "canonical" neurones in the human brain: An fMRI study. Neuroimage 18: 928-937.
37. Grèzes J, Pichon S, de Gelder B (2007): Perceiving fear in dynamic body expressions. NeuroImage 35: 959-967.
38. Haviland MG (1998): The validity of the California Q-set alexithymia prototype. Psychosomatics 39: 536-539.
39. Helmes E, McNeill PD, Holden RR, Jackson C (2008): The construct of alexithymia: Associations with defense mechanisms. J Clin Psychol 64: 318-331.
40. Hoshi E, Tanji J (2004): Functional specialization in dorsal and ventral premotor areas. Prog Brain Res 143: 507-511.
41. Huber M, Herholz K, Habedank B, Thiel A, Muller-Kuppers M, Ebel H, Subic-Wrana C, Kohle K, Heiss WD (2002): Different patterns of regional brain activation during emotional stimulation in alexithymics in comparison with normal controls. Psychother Psychosom Med Psychol 52: 469-478.
42. Kano M, Fukudo S, Gyoba J, Kamachi M, Tagawa M, Mochizuki H, Itoh M, Hongo M, Yanai K (2003): Specific brain processing of facial expressions in people with alexithymia: An H215O-PET study. Brain 126: 1474-1484.
43. Kano M, Hamaguchi T, Itoh M, Yanai K, Fukudo S (2007): Correlation between alexithymia and hypersensitivity to visceral stimulation in human. Pain 132: 252-263.
44. Karlsson H, Naatanen P, Stenman H (2008): Cortical activation in alexithymia as a response to emotional stimuli. Br J Psychiatry 192: 32-38.
45. Keysers C, Gazzola V (2007): Integrating simulation and theory of mind: From self to social cognition. Trends Cogn Sci 11: 194-196.
46. Kooiman CG, Spinhoven P, Trijsburg RW (2002): The assessment of alexithymia: A critical review of the literature and a psychometric study of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20. J Psychosom Res 53: 1083-1090.
47. Kugel H, Eichmann M, Dannlowski U, Ohrmann P, Bauer J, Arolt V, Heindel W, Suslow T (2008): Alexithymic features and automatic amygdala reactivity to facial emotion. Neurosci Lett 435: 40-44.
48. Lane RD, Ahern GL, Schwartz GE, Kaszniak AW (1997): Is alexithymia the emotional equivalent of blindsight? Biol Psychiatry 42: 834-844.
49. Lane RD, Reiman EM, Axelrod B, Yun LS, Holmes A, Schwartz GE (1998): Neural correlates of levels of emotional awareness: Evidence of an interaction between emotion and attention in the anterior cingulate cortex. J Cogn Neurosci 10: 525.
50. LeDoux JE (1995): Emotion: Clues from the brain. Annu Rev Psychol 46: 209-235.
51. LeDoux JE (2000): Emotion circuits in the brain. Annu Rev Neurosci 23: 155-84.
52. Leweke F, Stark R, Milch W, Kurth R, Schienle A, Kirsch P, Stingl M, Reimer C, Vaitl D (2004): Patterns of neuronal activity related to emotional stimulation in alexithymia. Psychother Psychosom Med 54: 437-444.
53. Li CS, Sinha R (2006): Alexithymia and stress-induced brain activation in cocaine-dependent men and women. J Psychiatry Neurosci 31: 115-121.
54. Loas G, Fremaux D, Marchand MP (1995): Factorial structure and internal consistency of the French version of the twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale in a group of 183 healthy proband. Encephale 21: 117-122.
55. Loas G, Otmani O, Fremaux D, Lecercle C, Duflot M, Delahousse J (1996): External validity, reliability and basic score determination of the Toronto Alexithymia Scales (TAS and TAS-20) in a group of alcoholic patients. Encephale 22: 35-40.
56. Luminet O, Taylor GJ, Bagby RM (2003): La mesure de l'alexithymie. In: Corcos M, Speranza M, editors. Psychopathologie de l'Alexithymie. Paris: Dunod.
57. Lumley MA, Neely LC, Burger AJ (2007): The assessment of alexithymia in medical settings: Implications for understanding and treating health problems. J Person Assess 89: 230-246.
58. Mantani T, Okamoto Y, Shirao N, Okada G, Yamawaki S (2005): Reduced activation of posterior cingulate cortex during imagery in subjects with high degrees of alexithymia: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Biol Psychiatry 57: 982-990.
59. McRae K, Reiman EM, Fort CL, Chen K, Lane RD (2008): Association between trait emotional awareness and dorsal anterior cingulate activity during emotion is arousal-dependent. NeuroImage 41: 648-655.
60. Mériau K, Wartenburger I, Kazzer P, Prehn K, Lammers CH, van der Meer E, Villringer A, Heekeren HR (2006): A neural network reflecting individual differences in cognitive processing of emotions during perceptual decision making. NeuroImage 33: 1016-1027.
61. Moriguchi Y, Ohnishi T, Lane RD, Maeda M, Mori T, Nemoto K, Matsuda H, Komaki G (2006): Impaired self-awareness and theory of mind: An fMRI study of mentalizing in alexithymia. NeuroImage 32: 1472-1482.
62. Moriguchi Y, Decety J, Ohnishi T, Maeda M, Mori T, Nemoto K, Matsuda H, Komaki G (2007): Empathy and judging other's pain: An fMRI study of alexithymia. Cereb Cortex 17: 2223-2234.
63. Moriguchi Y, Ohnishi T, Decety J, Hirakata M, Maeda M, Matsuda H, Komaki G (2008): The human mirror neuron system in a population with deficient self-awareness: An fMRI study in alexithymia. Human Brain Mapp 9999.
64. Ochsner KN, Ray RD, Cooper JC, Robertson ER, Chopra S, Gabrieli JD, Gross JJ (2004): For better or for worse: Neural systems supporting the cognitive down- and up-regulation of negative emotion. Neuroimage 23: 483-499.
65. Oldfield RC (1971): The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia 9: 97-113.
66. Passingham RE (1993): The Frontal Lobes and Voluntary Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
67. Phan KL, Taylor SF, Welsh RC, Decker LR, Noll DC, Nichols TE, Britton JC, Liberzon I (2003): Activation of the medial prefrontal cortex and extended amygdala by individual ratings of emotional arousal: A fMRI study. Biol Psychiatry 53: 211-215.
68. Phan KL, Fitzgerald DA, Nathan PJ, Moore GJ, Uhde TW, Tancer ME (2005): Neural substrates for voluntary suppression of negative affect: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Biol Psychiatry 57: 210-219.
69. Pichon S, de Gelder B, Grèzes J (2008): Emotional modulation of visual and motor areas by dynamic body expressions of anger. Soc Neurosci 3: 199-212.
70. Pichon S, de Gelder B, Grèzes J (2009): Two different faces of threat. Comparing the neural systems for recognizing fear and anger in dynamic body expressions. NeuroImage 47: 1873-1883.
71. Preston SD, e Waal FB (2002): Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behav Brain Sci 25: 1-20.
72. Reker M, Ohrmann P, Rauch AV, Kugel H, Bauer J, Dannlowski U, Arolt V, Heindel W, Suslow T (2009): Individual differences in alexithymia and brain response to masked emotion faces. Cortex In Press, Corrected Proof.
73. Rizzolatti G, Fadiga L, Gallese V, Fogassi L (1996): Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 3: 131-141.
74. Rizzolatti G, Fogassi L, Gallese V (2001): Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action. Nat Rev Neurosci 2: 661-670.
75. Rubino V, Blasi G, Latorre V, Fazio L, d'Errico I, Mazzola V, Caforio G, Nardini M, Popolizio T, Hariri A, Arciero G, Bertolino A (2007): Activity in medial prefrontal cortex during cognitive evaluation of threatening stimuli as a function of personality style. Brain Res Bull 74: 250-257.
76. Sifneos PE (1973): The prevalence of alexithymic characteristics in psychosomatic patients. Psychother Pschosom 22: 255-262.
77. Sifneos PE (1996): Alexithymia: Past and present. Am J Psychiatry 153: 137-142.
78. Silani G, Bird G, Brindley R, Singer T, Frith C, Frith U (2008): Levels of emotional awareness and autism: An fMRI study. Soc Neurosci 3: 97-112.
79. Sommerville JA, Decety J (2006): Weaving the fabric of social interaction: Articulating developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience in the domain of motor cognition. Psychonom Bull Rev 13: 179-200.
80. Taylor GJ, Bagby RM (2004): New trends in alexithymia research. Psychother Psychosom 73: 68-77.
81. Taylor GJ, Bagby RM, Parker JDA (1997): Disorders of affect regulation alexithymia in medical and psychiatric illness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
82. Taylor GJ, Bagby RM, Parker JDA (2008): Disorders of affect regulation alexithymia in medical and psychiatric illness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
83. Tomassini V, Jbabdi S, Klein JC, Behrens TEJ, Pozzilli C, Matthews PM, Rushworth MFS, Johansen-Berg H (2007): Diffusion-weighted imaging tractography-based parcellation of the human lateral premotor cortex identifies dorsal and ventral subregions with anatomical and functional specializations. J Neurosci 27: 10259-10269.
84. Zech E, Luminet O (1999): Alexithymia and its measurement: Confirmatory factor analyses of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire. Eur J Person 13: 511-532.