Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada; Mood Disorders Program, St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; Homewood Research Institute, Homewood Health, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 2021 Mar;113:104919. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104919. Epub 2021 Jan 18.
Emotions have been associated with culturally universal and distinct bodily sensation "maps". Despite this knowledge, to date few studies have explored emotion-specific topography along clinically relevant dimensions, such as alexithymia.
We aimed to investigate emotion-specific topographies among individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment or neglect with absent (n = 51) or with probable (n = 46) alexithymia in adulthood, as defined by scores on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20).
Ninety eight adult participants with exposure to childhood maltreatment or neglect were recruited to complete an online survey.
Using the well-validated emBODY tool (Nummenmaa et al., 2014), participants reported on their somatic experience of 17 emotions.
Random effects analyses revealed topographically distinct bodily sensation t-maps that differentiated participants who endorsed probable alexithymia from those who did not (p-FDR < .05). Consistent with our a priori hypothesis, the probable alexithymia group reported a muted, diffuse and undifferentiated pattern of emotion-specific bodily sensation, whereas the non-alexithymia group reported a more distinct and localized pattern.
These results suggest that difficulty identifying and labeling emotions, as observed in alexithymia, may arise, in part, from an altered perception of somatic activation. It is well-established that childhood maltreatment predicts the development of alexithymia symptoms. The preliminary findings presented here expand our working understanding of the physical markers of childhood trauma, which may be used in practice to aid detection and to monitor treatment outcomes.
情绪与具有文化普遍性和独特身体感觉“图谱”有关。尽管有此认识，但迄今为止，很少有研究从临床上相关的维度（如述情障碍）探索特定情绪的地形。
我们旨在研究在成年期经历过童年期虐待或忽视且存在（n=51）或可能存在（n=46）述情障碍的个体中，特定情绪的地形，述情障碍的定义是多伦多述情障碍量表（TAS-20）的得分。
招募了 98 名经历过童年期虐待或忽视的成年参与者来完成在线调查。
使用经过充分验证的 emBODY 工具（Nummenmaa 等人，2014），参与者报告了 17 种情绪的躯体体验。
随机效应分析显示，具有拓扑差异的身体感觉 t 图可区分那些可能存在述情障碍的参与者和那些不存在述情障碍的参与者（p-FDR<.05）。与我们的先验假设一致，可能存在述情障碍的组报告了一种迟钝、弥散和未分化的特定情绪的躯体感觉模式，而无述情障碍的组报告了一种更明显和局部化的模式。
这些结果表明，如述情障碍中观察到的难以识别和标记情绪，可能部分源于对躯体激活的改变感知。众所周知，童年期虐待会预测述情障碍症状的发展。这里提出的初步发现扩展了我们对童年创伤的身体标记物的工作理解，这些标记物可用于实践中以帮助检测和监测治疗结果。
