Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Leipzig, Semmelweisstrasse 10, 04103, Leipzig, Germany.
Institute of Transportation Systems, German Aerospace Center, Lilienthalplatz 7, 38108, Brunswick, Germany.
BMC Neurosci. 2020 May 29;21(1):23. doi: 10.1186/s12868-020-00572-6.
Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, an externally oriented style of thinking, and a reduced inclination to imagination. Previous research has shown deficits in the recognition of emotional facial expressions in alexithymia and reductions of brain responsivity to emotional stimuli. Using an affective priming paradigm, we investigated automatic perception of facial emotions as a function of alexithymia at the behavioral and neural level. In addition to self-report scales, we applied an interview to assess alexithymic tendencies.
During 3 T fMRI scanning, 49 healthy individuals judged valence of neutral faces preceded by briefly shown happy, angry, fearful, and neutral facial expressions. Alexithymia was assessed using the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) and the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA). As expected, only negative correlations were found between alexithymic features and affective priming. The global level of self-reported alexithymia (as assessed by the TAS-20 and the BVAQ) was found to be related to less affective priming owing to angry faces. At the facet level, difficulties identifying feelings, difficulties analyzing feelings, and impoverished fantasy (as measured by the BVAQ) were correlated with reduced affective priming due to angry faces. Difficulties identifying feelings (BVAQ) correlated also with reduced affective priming due to fearful faces and reduced imagination (TSIA) was related to decreased affective priming due to happy faces. There was only one significant correlation between alexithymia dimensions and automatic brain response to masked facial emotions: TAS-20 alexithymia correlated with heightened brain response to masked happy faces in superior and medial frontal areas.
Our behavioral results provide evidence that alexithymic features are related in particular to less sensitivity for covert facial expressions of anger. The perceptual alterations could reflect impaired automatic recognition or integration of social anger signals into judgemental processes and might contribute to the problems in interpersonal relationships associated with alexithymia. Our findings suggest that self-report measures of alexithymia may have an advantage over interview-based tests as research tools in the field of emotion perception at least in samples of healthy individuals characterized by rather low levels of alexithymia.
述情障碍是一种以难以识别和描述感受、外向型思维方式以及想象力降低为特征的人格特质。先前的研究表明，述情障碍患者在识别情绪面部表情方面存在缺陷，并且对情绪刺激的大脑反应性降低。我们使用情感启动范式，从行为和神经水平研究了述情障碍对情绪面部表情的自动感知。除了自我报告量表外，我们还应用访谈来评估述情倾向。
在 3T fMRI 扫描过程中，49 名健康个体判断了先前短暂呈现的快乐、愤怒、恐惧和中性面部表情的中性面孔的情绪效价。使用 20 项多伦多述情障碍量表（TAS-20）、Bermond-Vorst 述情障碍问卷（BVAQ）和多伦多结构性访谈述情障碍量表（TSIA）评估述情障碍。正如预期的那样，仅发现述情障碍特征与情感启动之间存在负相关。自我报告的述情障碍（由 TAS-20 和 BVAQ 评估）的总体水平与由于愤怒面孔而导致的情感启动减少有关。在方面水平上，识别感受的困难、分析感受的困难和想象力匮乏（由 BVAQ 测量）与由于愤怒面孔而导致的情感启动减少有关。识别感受的困难（BVAQ）也与由于恐惧面孔而导致的情感启动减少有关，想象力匮乏（TSIA）与由于快乐面孔而导致的情感启动减少有关。述情障碍维度与对蒙面面部情绪的自动大脑反应之间仅存在一个显著的相关性：TAS-20 述情障碍与上额和内侧额区蒙面快乐面孔的大脑反应增强相关。
我们的行为结果提供了证据，表明述情障碍特征与对愤怒的隐蔽面部表情的敏感性降低有关。感知改变可能反映了自动识别或整合社交愤怒信号到判断过程中的受损，并且可能导致与述情障碍相关的人际关系问题。我们的发现表明，自我报告的述情障碍测量可能比基于访谈的测试作为情感感知领域的研究工具具有优势，至少在自我报告的述情障碍水平较低的健康个体样本中是如此。
