The cognitive and affective alexithymia dimensions in the regulation of sympathetic responses.

OBJECTIVE: The literature regarding research into alexithymia and sympathetic responses is far from consistent. An explanation might be on the way subjects are classified. Generally, subjects are diagnosed as either alexithymic or non-alexithymic on the basis of questionnaires focusing on the cognitive aspects of alexithymia. However, alexithymia, as originally defined, concerns both emotion-affective and emotion-cognitive deficits. The aim of the present paper is to study the importance of the affective and cognitive alexithymia components in the regulation of sympathetic responses. METHODS: Subjects, who scored extremely (either high or low) on both the cognitive and the affective components of alexithymia, were shown neutral and emotional pictures, while their GSR was measured. RESULTS: The affective alexithymia component, not the cognitive component, turned out to be an important factor in the regulation of GSR peak amplitude. The results further indicate a significant interaction of type of emotional deficit (cognitive by affective) on GSR latency times. Finally, suggestive evidence indicated that baselines values, defined by the levels during the second preceding the stimulus, are related to the cognitive component of alexithymia, in the sense that higher emotion-cognitive capacities result in higher baseline values. CONCLUSIONS: We cautiously conclude that the classification of alexithymics on the basis of both the affective and cognitive components, rather than on the basis of the cognitive component only, might provide more consistent research results, and thus lead to a better understanding of emotional physiological responses in alexithymic subjects.

Cognitive neuropsychology of alexithymia: implications for personality typology.

INTRODUCTION: We examine the cognitive neuroscience of the five components of the alexithymia syndrome, and propose a classification of alexithymia types based on psychobiological traits. METHOD: Literature review. RESULTS: The following neural structures have been shown to be prominent in emotional function: right and left hemisphere, corpus callosum, anterior commissure, anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and insular cortex. The specific relevance of these structures to alexithymia is discussed. CONCLUSIONS: The following conclusions and/or propositions are presented: The right hemisphere produces a global, nonverbal overview of emotional information; the left hemisphere seems dedicated to analysing emotions and higher explicit emotional cognitions. Both orbitoprefrontal cortices are important in affective aspects of alexithymia, while right temporal cortex is involved in cognitive aspects. Two subparts of anterior cingulate fulfil functions in the affective and cognitive dimensions of alexithymia. The amygdalae are involved in both cognitive and affective aspects. All structures mentioned can modulate one another. The role of interhemispheric information transfer via the corpus callosum and the anterior commissure is also discussed. The evidence that that cognitive processing of emotional information inhibits affective processing of such information is discussed in terms of its implications for a theory of alexithymia subtypes.