Donges Uta-Susan, Suslow Thomas
Rev Neurosci. 2017 Apr 1;28(3):247-264. doi: 10.1515/revneuro-2016-0049.
Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties in recognizing and verbalizing emotions and the utilization of a cognitive style that is oriented toward external events, rather than intrapsychic experiences. Alexithymia is considered a vulnerability factor influencing onset and course of many psychiatric disorders. Even though emotions are, in general, elicited involuntarily and emerge without conscious effort, it is surprising that little attention in etiological considerations concerning alexithymia has been given to deficits in automatic emotion processing and their neurobiological bases. In this article, results from studies using behavioral or neurobiological research methods were systematically reviewed in which automatic processing of external emotional information was investigated as a function of alexithymia in healthy individuals. Twenty-two studies were identified through a literature search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2016. The review reveals deficits in the automatic processing of emotional stimuli in alexithymia at a behavioral and neurobiological level. The vast majority of the reviewed studies examined visual processing. The alexithymia facets externally oriented thinking and difficulties identifying feelings were found to be related to impairments in the automatic processing of threat-related facial expressions. Alexithymic individuals manifest low reactivity to barely visible negative emotional stimuli in brain regions responsible for appraisal, encoding, and affective response, e.g. amygdala, occipitotemporal areas, and insula. Against this background, it appears plausible to assume that deficits in automatic emotion processing could be factors contributing to alexithymic personality characteristics. Directions for future research on alexithymia and automatic emotion perception are suggested.
述情障碍是一种人格特质，其特征在于难以识别和表达情感，以及运用一种面向外部事件而非内心体验的认知风格。述情障碍被认为是影响许多精神疾病发病和病程的一个易患因素。尽管情绪通常是不由自主地引发的，且无需有意识的努力就会出现，但令人惊讶的是，在关于述情障碍的病因学考量中，很少有人关注自动情绪加工方面的缺陷及其神经生物学基础。在本文中，我们系统回顾了使用行为或神经生物学研究方法的研究结果，其中在健康个体中研究了作为述情障碍函数的外部情绪信息的自动加工。通过对1990年至2016年Psycinfo、PubMed和科学网数据库的文献检索，确定了22项研究。该综述揭示了在行为和神经生物学层面，述情障碍患者在情绪刺激的自动加工方面存在缺陷。绝大多数被综述的研究考察了视觉加工。述情障碍的外向性思维和难以识别情感等方面被发现与威胁相关面部表情的自动加工受损有关。述情障碍个体在负责评估、编码和情感反应的脑区，如杏仁核、枕颞区和脑岛，对几乎不可见的负面情绪刺激表现出低反应性。在此背景下，假设自动情绪加工方面的缺陷可能是导致述情障碍人格特征的因素似乎是合理的。文中还提出了关于述情障碍和自动情绪感知未来研究的方向。
