Laboratoire de Neurosciences, 1 Place Leclerc - Université de Franche-Comté, 25030 Cedex, Besançon, France.
Psychiatry Res. 2010 May 15;177(1-2):135-8. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2009.01.018. Epub 2010 Apr 8.
Alexithymia is characterized by a marked inability to identify feelings and emotional states and some studies have documented sensorial perception in response to visual or auditory cues in this disease. Although olfaction is well known for its emotional correlates, the perception of olfactory stimulations has not been previously investigated. This study compares with standard psychophysical methods the olfactory sensitivity and the self-ratings of intensity and hedonic valence of a panel of odorants in alexithymic patients, non-alexithymic patients and control subjects. Results show that alexithymics over-evaluate intensity and pleasantness of odorants compared to non-alexithymics or control subjects. This could be interpreted in the framework of a lack of inhibitory control including this particular sense.
述情障碍的特点是明显无法识别感觉和情绪状态，一些研究记录了在这种疾病中对视觉或听觉线索的感觉知觉。尽管嗅觉因其与情绪的相关性而广为人知，但嗅觉刺激的感知尚未得到研究。本研究使用标准心理物理方法比较了述情障碍患者、非述情障碍患者和对照组对一组气味剂的嗅觉敏感性以及对强度和愉悦度的自我评估。结果表明，与非述情障碍者或对照组相比，述情障碍者会过度评估气味剂的强度和愉悦度。这可以在缺乏包括这种特殊感觉在内的抑制控制的框架内进行解释。
