Alexithymic features and the labeling of brief emotional facial expressions - An fMRI study

Neuropsychologia

Volumn 64, Issue , 2014, Pages 289-299

  Ihme, Klas ^a   Sacher, Julia ^a,b   Lichev, Vladimir ^a   Rosenberg, Nicole ^a   Kugel, Harald ^c   Rufer, Michael ^d   Grabe, Hans Jörgen ^e,f   Pampel, André ^b   Lepsien, Jöran ^b   Kersting, Anette ^a   Villringer, Arno ^a,b   Lane, Richard D ^g   Suslow, Thomas ^a,c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG   (Germany)

^b MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN COGNITIVE AND BRAIN SCIENCES   (Germany)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MÜNSTER   (Germany)

^d UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL ZURICH   (Switzerland)

^e UNIVERSITY OF GREIFSWALD   (Germany)

^f HELIOS Hanseklinikum Stralsund   (Germany)

^g UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA COLLEGE OF MEDICINE   (United States)

Author keywords

Alexithymia; Emotional facial expressions; Striatum; Toronto Alexithymia Scale; Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ALEXITHYMIA; ANGER; ARTICLE; CONTROLLED STUDY; CORPUS STRIATUM; EMOTIONALITY; FACIAL EXPRESSION; FEAR; FEMALE; FRONTAL CORTEX; FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; HAPPINESS; HUMAN; MAJOR CLINICAL STUDY; MALE; OCCIPITAL CORTEX; STRUCTURED INTERVIEW; TEMPORAL CORTEX; TORONTO ALEXITHYMIA SCALE; TORONTO STRUCTURED INTERVIEW FOR ALEXITHYMIA; ADOLESCENT; BRAIN; DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING; EMOTION; EMOTIONAL DISORDER; FACIAL RECOGNITION; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TEST; NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; PERCEPTION; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL RATING SCALE; PSYCHOLOGY; YOUNG ADULT;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; AFFECTIVE SYMPTOMS; BRAIN; EMOTIONS; FACIAL EXPRESSION; FACIAL RECOGNITION; FEMALE; HUMANS; MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; MALE; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS; PSYCHIATRIC STATUS RATING SCALES; SOCIAL PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84908668957     PISSN: 00283932     EISSN: 18733514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.09.044     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. Aaronson D., Watts B. Extensions of Grier's computational formulas for A' and B' to below-chance performance. Psychol. Bull. 1987, 102(3):439-442.
2. Adolphs R. Neural systems for recognizing emotion. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 2002, 12(2):169-177.
3. Adolphs R. Recognizing emotion from facial expressions: psychological and neurological mechanisms. Behav. Cognit. Neurosci. Rev. 2002, 1(1):21-62.
4. Adolphs R., Damasio H., Tranel D., Cooper G., Damasio A.R. A role for somatosensory cortices in the visual recognition of emotion as revealed by three-dimensional lesion mapping. J. Neurosci. 2000, 20(7):2683-2690.
5. Anderson B.J. Plasticity of gray matter volume: the cellular and synaptic plasticity that underlies volumetric change. Dev. Psychobiol. 2011, 53(5):456-465.
6. Bach M., Bach D., de Zwaan M., Serim J., Böhmer J. Validierung der deutschen Version der 20-Item Toronto Alxithymie Skala bei Normalpersonen und psychiatrischen Patienten. Psychother. Psychosom. Med. Psychol. 1996, 46(1):23-28.
7. Bagby R.M., Parker J.D.A., Taylor G.J. The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia scale-I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. J. Psychosom. Res. 1994, 38(1):23-32.
8. Bagby R.M., Quilty L.C., Taylor G.J., Grabe H.J., Luminet O., Verissimo R., Vanheule S. Are there subtypes of alexithymia?. Personal. Individ. Differ. 2009, 47(5):413-418.
9. Bagby R.M., Taylor G.J., Parker J.D.A., Dickens S.E. The development of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia: item selection, factor structure, reliability and concurrent validity. Psychother. Psychosom. 2006, 75(1):25-39.
10. Bermond B., Clayton K., Liberova A., Luminet O., Maruszewski T., Ricci Bitti P.E., Wicherts J. A cognitive and an affective dimension of alexithymia in six languages and seven populations. Cogn. Emot. 2007, 21(5):1125-1136.
11. Calder A.J., Keane J., Lawrence A.D., Manes F. Impaired recognition of anger following damage to the ventral striatum. Brain 2004, 127(9):1958-1969.
12. Calder A.J., Keane J., Young A.W., Lawrence A.D., Mason S., Barker R.a. The relation between anger and different forms of disgust: implications for emotion recognition impairments in Huntington's disease. Neuropsychologia 2010, 48(9):2719-2729.
13. Calvo M.G., Lundqvist D. Facial expressions of emotion (KDEF): identification under different display-duration conditions. Behav. Res. Methods 2008, 40(1):109-115.
14. Caretti V., Porcelli P., Solano L., Schimmenti A., Bagby R.M., Taylor G.J. Reliability and validity of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia in a mixed clinical and nonclinical sample from Italy. Psychiatry Res. 2011, 187(3):432-436.
15. Cohen M.X., Schoene-Bake J.-C., Elger C.E., Weber B. Connectivity-based segregation of the human striatum predicts personality characteristics. Nat. Neurosci. 2009, 12(1):32-34.
16. Cook R., Brewer R., Shah P., Bird G. Alexithymia, not autism, predicts poor recognition of emotional facial expressions. Psychol. Sci. 2013, 24(5):723-732.
17. Delle-Vigne D., Wang W., Kornreich C., Verbanck P., Campanella S. Emotional facial expression processing in depression: data from behavioral and event-related potential studies. Clin. Neurophysiol. 2014, 1-19.
18. Di Martino A., Scheres A., Margulies D.S., Kelly A.M.C., Uddin L.Q., Shezdad Z., Milham M.P. Functional connectivity of human striatum: a resting state fMRI study. Cereb. Cortex 2008, 18:2735-2747.
19. Duan X., Dai Q., Gong Q., Chen H. Neural mechanism of unconscious perception of surprised facial expression. NeuroImage 2010, 52(1):401-407.
20. Eichmann M., Kugel H., Suslow T. Difficulty identifying feelings and automatic activation in the fusiform gyrus in response to facial emotion. Percept. Mot. Skills 2008, 107(3):915-922.
21. Erickson K., Schulkin J. Facial expressions of emotion: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Brain Cogn. 2003, 52(1):52-60.
22. Fusar-Poli P., Placentino A., Carletti F., Landi P., Allen P., Surguladze S., Politi P. Functional atlas of emotional faces processing: a voxel-based meta-analysis of 105 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. J. Psychiatry Neurosci. 2009, 34(6):418-432.
23. Gorno-Tempini M.L., Pradelli S., Serafini M., Pagnoni G., Baraldi P., Porro C., Nichelli P. Explicit and incidental facial expression processing: an fMRI study. NeuroImage 2001, 14(2):465-473.
24. Grabe H.J., Löbel S., Dittrich D., Bagby R.M., Taylor G.J., Quilty L.C., Rufer M. The German version of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia: factor structure, reliability, and concurrent validity in a psychiatric patient sample. Compr. Psychiatry 2009, 50(5):424-430.
25. Grabe H.J., Rufer M., Bagby R.M., Taylor G.J., Parker J.D.A. TSIA. Strukturiertes Toronto Alexithymie Interview 2014, Verlag Hans Huber, Bern.
26. Grynberg D., Chang B., Corneille O., Maurage P., Vermeulen N., Berthoz S., Luminet O. Alexithymia and the Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFEs): systematic review, unanswered questions and further perspectives. PloS One 2012, 7(8):e42429.
27. Hautzinger, M., Keller, F., Kühner, C., 2006. Beck-Depressions-Inventar (BDI). Frankfurt/Main: Harcourt Test Services.
28. Haxby J.V., Hoffman E.A., Gobbini M.I. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2000, 4(6):223-233.
29. Heberlein A.S., Adolphs R. Neurobiology of emotion recognition: current evidence for shared substrates. Social Neuroscience 2007, 31-55. Guilford Press, New York. 1st edition. E. Harmon-Jones, P. Winkielman (Eds.).
30. Heberlein A.S., Atkinson A.P. Neuroscientific evidence for simulation and shared substrates in emotion recognition: beyond faces. Emot. Rev. 2009, 1(2):162-177.
31. Honkalampi K., Hintikka J., Tanskanen A., Lehtonen J., Viinamäki H. Depression is strongly associated with alexithymia in the general population. J. Psychosom. Res. 2000, 48(1):99-104.
32. Ihme K., Dannlowski U., Lichev V., Stuhrmann A., Grotegerd D., Rosenberg N., Suslow T. Alexithymia is related to differences in gray matter volume: a voxel-based morphometry study. Brain Res. 2013, 1491:60-67.
33. Ihme K., Sacher J., Lichev V., Rosenberg N., Kugel H., Rufer M., Suslow T. Alexithymia and the labeling of facial emotions: response slowing and increased motor and somatosensory processing. BMC Neurosci. 2014, 15(1):40.
34. Inslegers R., Meganck R., Ooms E., Vanheule S., Bagby M., Taylor G., Desmet M. The Dutch language version of the Toronto structured interview for Alexithymia: reliability, concurrent validity, and factor structure. Psychol. Belg. 2013, 53:93-116.
35. Iriki A. The neural origins and implications of imitation, mirror neurons and tool use. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 2006, 16(6):660-667.
36. Jabbi M., Keysers C. Inferior frontal gyrus activity triggers anterior insula response to emotional facial expressions. Emotion 2008, 8(6):775-780.
37. Kanwisher N., McDermott J., Chun M.M. The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. J. Neurosci. 1997, 17(11):4302-4311.
38. Kanwisher N., Yovel G. The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B Biol. Sci. 2006, 361(1476):2109-2128.
39. Kätsyri J., Saalasti S., Tiippana K., von Wendt L., Sams M. Impaired recognition of facial emotions from low-spatial frequencies in Asperger syndrome. Neuropsychologia 2008, 46(7):1888-1897.
40. Krohne H.W., Egloff B., Kohlmann C.-W., Tausch A. Untersuchungen mit einer deutschen Version der "Positive and Negative Affect Schedule" (PANAS). [Investigations with a German version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS).]. Diagnostica 1996, 42(2):139-156.
41. Kubota M., Miyata J., Hirao K., Fujiwara H., Kawada R., Fujimoto S., Murai T. Alexithymia and regional gray matter alterations in schizophrenia. Neurosci. Res. 2011, 70(2):206-213.
42. Kugel H., Eichmann M., Dannlowski U., Ohrmann P., Bauer J., Arolt V., Suslow T. Alexithymic features and automatic amygdala reactivity to facial emotion. Neurosci. Lett. 2008, 435(1):40-44.
43. Lane R.D., Sechrest L., Reidel R., Weldon V., Kaszniak A., Schwartz G.E. Impaired verbal and nonverbal emotion recognition in alexithymia. Psychosom. Med. 1996, 58(3):203-210.
44. Lane R.D., Sechrest L., Riedel R., Shapiro D., Kaszniak a.W. Pervasive emotion recognition deficit common to alexithymia and the repressive coping style. Psychosom. Med. 2000, 62(4):492-501.
45. Laricchiuta, D., Petrosini, L., Picerni, E., Cutuli, D., Iorio, M., Chiapponi, C., Spalletta, G. The embodied emotion in cerebellum: a neuroimaging study of alexithymia. Brain Struct. Funct. in press, . http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00429-014-0790-0.
46. Laux L., Glanzmann P., Schaffner P., Spielberger C.D. State-Trait-Anxiety Inventory (STAI) 1981, Hogrefe, Göttingen, (German version).
47. Lee B.-T., Lee H.-Y., Park S.-A., Lim J.-Y., Tae W.S., Lee M.-S., Ham B.-J. Neural substrates of affective face recognition in alexithymia: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Neuropsychobiology 2011, 63(2):119-124.
48. Lee, I.A., Preacher, K.J., 2013. Calculation for the test of the difference between two dependent correlations with one variable in common. (accessed August 2014). http://www.quantpsy.org/corrtest/corrtest2.htm.
49. Lichev V., Rufer M., Rosenberg N., Ihme K., Grabe H.J., Kugel H., Suslow T. Assessing alexithymia and emotional awareness: relations between measures in a German non-clinical sample. Compr. Psychiatry 2014, 55(4):952-959.
50. Lumley M.A., Gustavson B.J., Partridge R.T., Labouvie-Vief G. Assessing alexithymia and related emotional ability constructs using multiple methods: interrelationships among measures. Emotion 2005, 5(3):329-342.
51. Lumley M.A., Ovies T., Stettner L., Wehmer F., Lakey B. Alexithymia, social support and health problems. J. Psychosom. Res. 1996, 41(6):519-530.
52. Lundqvist D., Flykt A., Öhman A. The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces - KDEF 1998, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychology Section, Karolinska Instituteit, Stockholm.
53. Mann L.S., Wise T.N., Trinidad A., Kohanski R. Alexithymia, affect recognition, and the five-factor model of personality in normal subjects. Psychol. Rep. 1994, 74(2):563-567.
54. Mann L.S., Wise T.N., Trinidad A., Kohanski R. Alexithymia, affect recognition, and five factors of personality in substance abusers. Percept. Mot. Skills 1995, 81(1):35-40.
55. Meganck R., Inslegers R., Vanheule S., Desmet M. The convergence of alexithymia measures. Psychol. Belg. 2011, 51(3-4):237-250.
56. Mériau K., Wartenburger I., Kazzer P., Prehn K., Lammers C.-H., van der Meer E., Heekeren H.R. A neural network reflecting individual differences in cognitive processing of emotions during perceptual decision making. NeuroImage 2006, 33(3):1016-1027.
57. Moriguchi Y., Komaki G. Neuroimaging studies of alexithymia: physical, affective, and social perspectives. BioPsychoSocial Med. 2013, 7(1):8.
58. Mugler J.P., Brookeman J.R. Three-dimensional magnetization-prepared rapid gradient-echo imaging (3D MP RAGE). Magn. Reson. Med. 1990, 15(1):152-157.
59. Murphy S.T., Zajonc R.B. Affect, cognition, and awareness: affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1993, 64(5):723-739.
60. Pandey R., Mandal M.K. Processing of facial expressions of emotion and alexithymia. Br. J. Clin. Psychol. 1997, 36(4):631-633.
61. Parker J.D., Taylor G.J., Bagby R.M. Alexithymia and the recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Psychother. Psychosom. 1993, 59(3-4):197-202.
62. Parker P.D., Prkachin K.M., Prkachin G.C. Processing of facial expressions of negative emotion in alexithymia: the influence of temporal constraint. J. Personal. 2005, 73(4):1087-1107.
63. Reker M., Ohrmann P., Rauch A.V., Kugel H., Bauer J., Dannlowski U., Suslow T. Individual differences in alexithymia and brain response to masked emotion faces. Cortex 2010, 46:658-667.
64. Rochas V., Gelmini L., Krolak-Salmon P., Poulet E., Saoud M., Brunelin J., Bediou B. Disrupting pre-SMA activity impairs facial happiness recognition: an event-related TMS study. Cereb. Cortex 2012, 23(7):1517-1525.
65. Sel A., Forster B., Calvo-Merino B. The emotional homunculus: ERP evidence for independent somatosensory responses during facial emotional processing. J. Neurosci. 2014, 34(9):3263-3267.
66. Sifneos P.E. The prevalence of alexithymic characteristics in psychosomatic patients. Psychother. Psychosom. 1973, 22(2-6):255-262.
67. Sonnby-Borgström M. Alexithymia as related to facial imitation, mentalization, empathy, and internal working models-of-self and -others. Neuropsychoanalysis 2009, 11(1):111-128.
68. Spitzer C., Siebel-Jurges U., Barnow S., Grabe H.J., Freyberger H.J. Alexithymia and interpersonal problems. Psychother. Psychosom. 2005, 74(4):240-246.
69. Sprengelmeyer R., Rausch M., Eysel U.T., Przuntek H. Neural structures associated with recognition of facial expressions of basic emotions. Proc. R. Soc. Biol. Sci. 1998, 265(1409):1927-1931.
70. Steiger J.H. Tests for comparing elements of a correlation matrix. Psychol. Bull. 1980, 87(2):245-251.
71. Suslow T., Kugel H., Ohrmann P., Stuhrmann A., Grotegerd D., Redlich R., Dannlowski U. Neural correlates of affective priming effects based on masked facial emotion: an fMRI study. Psychiatry Res. Neuroimaging 2013, 211(3):239-245.
72. Swart M., Kortekaas R., Aleman A. Dealing with feelings: characterization of trait alexithymia on emotion regulation strategies and cognitive-emotional processing. PloS One 2009, 4(6):e5751.
73. Taylor G.J. Recent developments in alexithymia theory and research. Can. J. Psychiatry 2000, 45(2):134-142.
74. Taylor G.J., Bagby R.M. New trends in alexithymia research. Psychother. Psychosom. 2004, 73:68-77.
75. Trinkler I., Cleret de Langavant L., Bachoud-Lévi A.-C. Joint recognition-expression impairment of facial emotions in Huntington's disease despite intact understanding of feelings. Cortex 2013, 49(2):549-558.
76. Troisi A., Delle Chiaie R., Russo F., Russo M.A., Mosco C., Pasini A. Nonverbal behavior and alexithymic traits in normal subjects. Individual differences in encoding emotions. J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. 1996, 184(9):561-566.
77. Tsuchida A., Fellows L.K. Are you upset? Distinct roles for orbitofrontal and lateral prefrontal cortex in detecting and distinguishing facial expressions of emotion. Cereb. Cortex 2012, 22(12):2904-2912.
78. Van der Gaag C., Minderaa R.B., Keysers C. Facial expressions: what the mirror neuron system can and cannot tell us. Soc. Neurosci. 2007, 2(3-4):179-222.
79. Van der Velde J., Gromann P., Swart M., Wiersma D., de Haan L., Bruggeman R., Aleman A. Alexithymia influences brain activation during emotion perception but not regulation. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2014, 10.1093/scan/nsu056 (online).
80. Van der Velde J., Servaas M.N., Goerlich K.S., Bruggeman R., Horton P., Costafreda S.G., Aleman A. Neural correlates of alexithymia: a meta-analysis of emotion processing studies. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 2013, 37(8):1774-1785.
81. Vorst H., Bermond B. Validity and reliability of the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire. Personal. Indiv. Differ. 2001, 30(3):413-434.
82. Wittchen H., Wunderlich U., Gruschwitz S., Zaudig M. SKID-I. Strukturiertes Klinisches Interview für DSM-IV 1997, Göttingen, Hogrefe.
83. Yarkoni T., Braver T.S. Cognitive neuroscience approaches to individual differences in working memory and executive control: conceptual and methodological issues. Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition 2010, 87-107. Springer, New York, NY. A. Gruszka, G. Matthews, B. Szymura (Eds.).