Alexithymia modulates emotion concept activation during facial expression processing.
Cereb Cortex
; 34(3)2024 03 01.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38466112
ABSTRACT
Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in emotional information processing. However, the underlying reasons for emotional processing deficits in alexithymia are not fully understood. The present study aimed to investigate the mechanism underlying emotional deficits in alexithymia. Using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, we recruited college students with high alexithymia (n = 24) or low alexithymia (n = 24) in this study. Participants judged the emotional consistency of facial expressions and contextual sentences while recording their event-related potentials. Behaviorally, the high alexithymia group showed longer response times versus the low alexithymia group in processing facial expressions. The event-related potential results showed that the high alexithymia group had more negative-going N400 amplitudes compared with the low alexithymia group in the incongruent condition. More negative N400 amplitudes are also associated with slower responses to facial expressions. Furthermore, machine learning analyses based on N400 amplitudes could distinguish the high alexithymia group from the low alexithymia group in the incongruent condition. Overall, these findings suggest worse facial emotion perception for the high alexithymia group, potentially due to difficulty in spontaneously activating emotion concepts. Our findings have important implications for the affective science and clinical intervention of alexithymia-related affective disorders.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Síntomas Afectivos
/
Electroencefalografía
Límite:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Cereb Cortex
Asunto de la revista:
CEREBRO
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
China