Blunted feelings: Alexithymia is associated with a diminished neural response to speech prosody

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

Volumn 9, Issue 8, 2014, Pages 1108-1117

  Goerlich Dobre, Katharina Sophia ^a,b   Witteman, Jurriaan ^c   Schiller, Niels O ^c   van Heuven, Vincent J P ^c   Aleman, André ^a,d   Martens, Sander ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER GRONINGEN   (Netherlands)

^b RWTH AACHEN UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

^c LEIDEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

^d UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

Alexithymia; Amygdala; Emotional prosody; Inferior frontal gyrus; Superior temporal gyrus

Indexed keywords

BRAIN; BRAIN MAPPING; DECISION MAKING; EMOTION; EMOTIONAL DISORDER; FEMALE; HUMAN; MALE; NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; PATHOPHYSIOLOGY; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL RATING SCALE; SPEECH; SPEECH PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

AFFECTIVE SYMPTOMS; BRAIN; BRAIN MAPPING; EMOTIONS; FEMALE; HUMANS; JUDGMENT; MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; MALE; PSYCHIATRIC STATUS RATING SCALES; SPEECH ACOUSTICS; SPEECH PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84905904255     PISSN: 17495016     EISSN: 17495024     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/scan/nst075     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. Adolphs, R., Tranel, D. (1999). Intact recognition of emotional prosody following amygdala damage. Neuropsychologia, 37, 1285-92.
2. Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H. (2001). Emotion recognition from faces and prosody following temporal lobectomy. Neuropsychology, 15, 396-404.
3. Armony, J.L. (2013). Current emotion research in behavioral neuroscience: the role(s) of the amygdala. Emotion Review, 5, 104-15.
4. Bagby, R., Parker, J., Taylor, G. (1994a). The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale: I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 23-32.
5. Bagby, R., Taylor, G., Parker, J. (1994b). The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale: II. Convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 33-40.
6. Bermond, B., Bierman, D., Cladder, M., Moormann, P., Vorst, H. (2010). The cognitive and affective alexithymia dimensions in the regulation of sympathetic responses. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 75, 227-33.
7. Berthoz, S., Artiges, E., Van de Moortele, P.F., et al. (2002). Effect of impaired recognition and expression of emotions on frontocingulate cortices: an fMRI study of men with alexithymia. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 961-7.
8. Berthoz, S., Consoli, S., Perez-Diaz, F., Jouvent, R. (1999). Alexithymia and anxiety: compounded relationships? A psychometric study. European Psychiatry, 14, 372-8.
9. Bird, G., Silani, G., Brindley, R., White, S., Frith, U., Singer, T. (2010). Empathic brain responses in insula are modulated by levels of alexithymia but not autism. Brain, 133, 1515-25.
10. Brück, C., Kreifelts, B., Kaza, E., Lotze, M., Wildgruber, D. (2011a). Impact of personality on the cerebral processing of emotional prosody. NeuroImage, 58, 259-68.
11. Brück, C., Kreifelts, B., Wildgruber, D. (2011b). Emotional voices in context: a neurobiological model of multimodal affective information processing. Physics of Life Reviews, 8, 383-403.
12. Brühl, A., Viebke, M., Baumgartner, T., Kaffenberger, T., Herwig, U. (2011). Neural correlates of personality dimensions and affective measures during the anticipation of emotional stimuli. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 5, 86-96.
13. Bydlowski, S., Corcos, M., Jeammet, P., et al. (2005). Emotion-processing deficits in eating disorders. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 37, 321-9.
14. Canli, T., Zhao, Z., Desmond, J.E., Kang, E., Gross, J., Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2001). An fMRI study of personality influences on brain reactivity to emotional stimuli. Behavioral Neuroscience, 15, 33-42.
15. De Houwer, J. (2006). What are implicit measures and why are we using them. In: Wiers, R.W., Stacy, A.W., editors. The Handbook of Implicit Cognition and Addiction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 219-44.
16. Donegan, H.N., Sanislow, C.A., Blumberg, H.P., et al. (2003). Amygdala hyperreactivity in borderline personality disorder: implications for emotional dysregulation. Biological Psychiatry, 54, 1284-93.
17. Duan, X., Dai, Q., Gong, Q., Chen, H. (2010). Neural mechanism of unconscious perception of surprised facial expression. NeuroImage, 52, 401-7.
18. Ethofer, T., Kreifelts, B., Wiethoff, S., et al. (2009). Differential influences of emotion, task, and novelty on brain regions underlying the processing of speech melody. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 1255-68.
19. Franz, M., Schaefer, R., Schneider, C., Sitte, W., Bachor, J. (2004). Visual event-related potentials in subjects with alexithymia: modified processing of emotional aversive information? American Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 728-35.
20. Frühholz, S., Ceravolo, L., Grandjean, D. (2011). Specific brain networks during explicit and implicit decoding of emotional prosody. Cerebral Cortex, 22, 1107-17.
21. Frühholz, S., Grandjean, D. (2013a). Multiple subregions in superior temporal cortex are differentially sensitive to vocal expressions: a quantitative meta-analysis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 37, 24-35.
22. Frühholz, S., Grandjean, D. (2013b). Amygdala subregions differentially respond and rapidly adapt to threatening voices. Cortex, 49, 1394-1403.
23. Garrido-Vásquez, P., Jessen, S., Kotz, S.A. (2011). Perception of emotion in psychiatric disorders: on the possible role of task, dynamics, and multimodality. Social Neuroscience, 6, 515-36.
24. Goerlich, K.S., Aleman, A., Martens, S. (2012). The sound of feelings: electrophysiological responses to emotional speech in alexithymia. PLoS One, 7, e36951.
25. Goerlich, K.S., Witteman, J., Aleman, A., Martens, S. (2011). Hearing feelings: affective categorization of music and speech in alexithymia, an ERP study. PLoS One, 6, e19501.
26. Grynberg, D., Luminet, O., Corneille, O., Grezes, J., Berthoz, S. (2010). Alexithymia in the interpersonal domain: a general deficit of empathy? Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 845-50.
27. Grynberg, D., Chang, B., Corneille, O., et al. (2012). Alexithymia and the processing of emotional facial expressions (EFEs): systematic review, unanswered questions and further perspectives. PLoS One, 7, e42429.
28. Guttman, H., Laporte, L. (2002). Alexithymia, empathy, and psychological symptoms in a family context. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 43, 448-55.
29. Hall, J., Whalley, H.C., McKirdy, J.W., et al. (2008). Overactivation of fear systems to neutral faces in schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry, 64, 70-3.
30. Hamann, S., Canli, T. (2004). Individual differences in emotion processing. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 14, 233-38.
31. Hooker, C., Verosky, S., Miyakawa, A., Knight, R., D'Esposito, M. (2008). The influence of personality on neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2709-24.
32. Jacob, H., Kreifelts, B., Brück, C., Erb, M., Hösl, F., Wildgruber, D. (2012). Cerebral integration of verbal and nonverbal emotional cues: impact of individual nonverbal dominance. NeuroImage, 61, 738-47.
33. Jacobs, R.H., Renken, R., Aleman, A., Cornelissen, F.W. (2012). The amygdala, top-down effects, and selective attention to features. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 36, 2069-84.
34. Kano, M., Fukudo, S., Gyoba, J., et al. (2003). Specific brain processing of facial expressions in people with alexithymia: an H2 15O-PET study. Brain, 126, 1474-84.
35. Karlsson, H., Näätänen, P., Stenman, H. (2008). Cortical activation in alexithymia as a response to emotional stimuli. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 192, 32-8.
36. Kooiman, C., Spinhoven, P., Trijsburg, R. (2002). The assessment of alexithymia: a critical review of the literature and a psychometric study of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 53, 1083-90.
37. Kotz, S., Paulmann, S. (2011). Emotion, language, and the brain. Language and Linguistics Compass, 5, 108-25.
38. Kugel, H., Eichmann, M., Dannlowski, U., et al. (2008). Alexithymic features and automatic amygdala reactivity to facial emotion. Neuroscience Letters, 435, 40-4.
39. Leitman, D.I., Wolf, D.H., Ragland, J.D., et al. (2010). "It's not what you say but how you say it": a reciprocal temporo-frontal network for affective prosody. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4, 19-31.
40. Leweke, F., Stark, R., Milch, W., et al. (2004). Patterns of neuronal activity related to emotional stimulation in alexithymia. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine, 54, 437-44.
41. 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. Biological Psychiatry, 57, 982-90.
42. Mériau, K., Wartenburger, I., Kazzer, P., et al. (2006). A neural network reflecting individual differences in cognitive processing of emotions during perceptual decision making. NeuroImage, 33, 1016-27.
43. Moormann, P., Bermond, B., Vorst, H., Bloemendaal, A., Teijn, S., Rood, L. (2008). New Avenues in Alexithymia Research: the Creation of Alexithymia Types. Emotion Regulation: Conceptual and Clinical Issues [e-book]. New York, NY: Springer Science + Business Media, pp. 27-42.
44. Mothes-Lasch, M., Mentzel, H., Miltner, W., Straube, T. (2011). Visual attention modulates brain activation to angry voices. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31, 9594-8.
45. Naranjo, C., Kornreich, C., Campanella, S., et al. (2011). Major depression is associated with impaired processing of emotion in music as well as in facial and vocal stimuli. Journal of Affective Disorders, 128, 243-51.
46. Ormel, J., Bastiaansen, J.A., Riese, H., et al. (2013). The biological and psychological basis of neuroticism: current status and future directions. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 37, 59-72.
47. Parker, P.D., Prkachin, K.M., Prkachin, G.C. (2005). Processing of facial expressions of negative emotion in alexithymia: the influence of temporal constraint. Journal of Personality, 73, 1087-107.
48. Picardi, A., Fagnani, C., Gigantesco, A., Toccaceli, V., Lega, I., Stazi, M. (2011). Genetic influences on alexithymia and their relationship with depressive symptoms. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 71, 256-63.
49. Pouga, L., Berthoz, S., de Gelder, B., Grèzes, J. (2010). Individual differences in socioaffective skills influence the neural bases of fear processing: the case of alexithymia. Human Brain Mapping, 31, 1469-81.
50. Prkachin, G., Casey, C., Prkachin, K. (2009). Alexithymia and perception of facial expressions of emotion. Personality and Individual Differences, 46, 412-7.
51. Reker, M., Ohrmann, P., Rauch, A.V., et al. (2010). Individual differences in alexithymia and brain response to masked emotion faces. Cortex, 46, 658-67.
52. Scherer, K.R. (2003). Vocal communication of emotion: a review of research paradigms. Speech Communication, 40, 227-56.
53. Sander, D., Grafman, J., Zalla, T. (2003). The human amygdala: an evolved system for relevance detection. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 14, 303-16.
54. Sander, D., Grandjean, D., Pourtois, G., et al. (2005). Emotion and attention interactions in social cognition: brain regions involved in processing anger prosody. NeuroImage, 28, 848-58.
55. Schirmer, A., Kotz, S.A. (2006). Beyond the right hemisphere: brain mechanisms mediating vocal emotional processing. Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 24-30.
56. Sifneos, P.E. (1973). The prevalence of 'alexithymic' characteristics in psychosomatic patients. Psychotherapy&Psychosomatics, 22, 255-62.
57. Spielberger, C.D., Gorsuch, R.L., Lushene, R.E. (1970). STAI Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press.
58. Spitzer, C., Siebel-Jurges, U., Barnow, S., Grabe, H.J., Freyberger, H.J. (2005). Alexithymia and interpersonal problems. Psychotherapy&Psychosomatics, 74, 240-6.
59. Swart, M., Kortekaas, R., Aleman, A. (2009). Dealing with feelings: characterization of trait alexithymia on emotion regulation strategies and cognitive-emotional processing. PLoS One, 4, e5751.
60. Taylor, G.J., Bagby, R.M., Parker, J.D.A. (1997). Disorders of Affect Regulation: Alexithymia in Medical and Psychiatric Illness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
61. van der Velde, J., Servaas, M.N., Goerlich, K.S., et al. (2013). Neural correlates of alexithymia: A meta-analysis of emotion processing studies. Neuroscience&Biobehavioral Reviews, 37, 1774-85.
62. Vanheule, S., Desmet, M., Meganck, R., Bogaerts, S. (2007). Alexithymia and interpersonal problems. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 63, 109-17.
63. Van Kleef, G. (2009). How emotions regulate social life: the emotions as social information (EASI) model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 184-8.
64. Vermeulen, N., Luminet, O., de Sousa, M.C., Campanella, S. (2008). Categorical perception of anger is disrupted in alexithymia: Evidence from a visual ERP study. Cognition and Emotion, 22, 1052-67.
65. Vrtička, P., Sander, D., Vuilleumier, P. (2012). Lateralized interactive social content and valence processing within the human amygdala. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 358.
66. Vuilleumier, P. (2005). How brains beware: neural mechanisms of emotional attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 585-94.
67. Wagner, A.W., Linehan, M.M. (1999). Facial expression recognition ability among women with borderline personality disorder: implications for emotion regulation? Journal of Personality Disorders, 13, 329-44.
68. Wiethoff, S., Wildgruber, D., Grodd, W., Ethofer, T. (2009). Response and habituation of the amygdala during processing of emotional prosody. Neuroreport, 20, 1356-60.
69. Wildgruber, D., Ethofer, T., Grandjean, D., Kreifelts, B. (2009). A cerebral network model of speech prosody comprehension. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11, 277-81.
70. Wildgruber, D., Ethofer, T., Kreifelts, B., Grandjean, D. (2008). Cerebral processing of emotional processing: a network model based on fMRI studies. In SP-2008, pp. 217-22. http://isca-seech.org/archive/sp2008/papers/2p08_217.pdf.
71. Wildgruber, D., Riecker, A., Hertrich, I., et al. (2005). Identification of emotional intonation evaluated by fMRI. NeuroImage, 24, 1233-41.
72. Witteman, J., Van Heuven, V.J.P., Schiller, N.O. (2012). Hearing feelings: a quantitative meta-analysis on the neuroimaging literature of emotional prosody perception. Neuropsychologia, 50, 2752-63.
73. Witteman, J., van IJzendoorn, M., van de Velde, D., van Heuven, V.J.P., Schiller, N.O. (2011). The nature of hemispheric specialization for linguistic and emotional prosodic perception: a meta-analysis of the lesion literature. Neuropsychologia, 49, 3722-38.
74. Woolrich, M., Jenkinson, M., Brady, J., Smith, S. (2004). Fully Bayesian spatio-temporal modelling of FMRI data. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 23, 213-31.