Alexithymia is associated with attenuated automatic brain response to facial emotion in clinical depression.
BACKGROUND
Alexithymia is a clinically relevant personality trait related to difficulties in recognizing and describing emotions. Previous studies examining the neural correlates of alexithymia have shown mainly decreased response of several brain areas during emotion processing in healthy samples and patients suffering from autism or post-traumatic stress disorder. In the present study, we examined the effect of alexithymia on automatic brain reactivity to negative and positive facial expressions in clinical depression.


METHODS
Brain activation in response to sad, happy, neutral, and no facial expression (presented for 33 ms and masked by neutral faces) was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T in 26 alexithymic and 26 non-alexithymic patients with major depression.


RESULTS
Alexithymic patients manifested less activation in response to masked sad and happy (compared to neutral) faces in right frontal regions and right caudate nuclei than non-alexithymic patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Our neuroimaging study provides evidence that the personality trait alexithymia has a modulating effect on automatic emotion processing in clinical depression. Our findings support the idea that alexithymia could be associated with functional deficits of the right hemisphere. Future research on the neural substrates of emotion processing in depression should assess and control alexithymia in their analyses.
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: suslow@medizin.uni-leipzig.de.
Thomas
T
Suslow
Department of Clinical Radiology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Harald
H
Kugel
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Michael
M
Rufer
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Ronny
R
Redlich
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Katharina
K
Dohm
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Dominik
D
Grotegerd
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Dario
D
Zaremba
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany; Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
Udo
U
Dannlowski
D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation
Alexithymia; Automatic processing; Depression; Facial expression; Functional magnetic resonance imaging