Alexithymia and automatic processing of emotional stimuli: a systematic review

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uta-Susan Donges ◽  
Thomas Suslow
Keyword(s):  
Visual Processing ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
Automatic Processing ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Emotional Information

AbstractAlexithymia 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.

scholarly journals Cortical activation in alexithymia as a response to emotional stimuli

2008 ◽  
Vol 192 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasse Karlsson ◽  
Petri Näätänen ◽  
Hanna Stenman
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
Cortical Activation ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Healthy Women ◽  
The Brain

BackgroundAlexithymia has been shown to be related to many psychiatric and somatic illnesses. Aberrant emotion processing in the brain may underlie several psychiatric disorders. However, little is known about the neurobiological underpinnings of alexithymia.AimsTo determine the way in which the brain processes emotion in alexithymia.MethodThe participants were 10 healthy women with alexithymia and 11 healthy women without this condition, recruited into the study on the basis of their scores on the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Four films were projected on a video screen to induce each of three emotional conditions (neutral, amusement, sadness). The brain areas activated during emotional stimuli in the alexithymia group were compared with those activated in the non-alexithymia group. Scans of the distribution of [15O]H2O were acquired using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner operated in three-dimensional mode.ResultsIn response to emotional stimuli participants with alexithymia activated more parts of their sensory and motor cortices and insula, especially on the left side, and less of their anterior cingulate, compared with the control group.ConclusionsWomen with alexithymia seem to over-activate their ‘bodily’ brain regions, implying a different mode of emotion processing. This may be related to their tendency to experience physical symptoms.

Psychophysiological Correlates of Attention to Emotional Information in Youth

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Vahlsing ◽  
Lori M. Hilt ◽  
Andrew R. Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Health ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Pupil Dilation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Sinus Arrhythmia ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Probe Task ◽  
Psychophysiological Correlates

Attention to emotional stimuli has been associated with psychological health among adults and youth. In this study, we examined 2 putative functional psychophysiological correlates of attention to emotional information in a community sample of 135 youth (Mage=12 years, 7 months; SDage=1 year, 1 month; 50% girls). After measuring resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), participants completed a 1,500 ms emotional faces dot probe task with eye tracking. We examined pupil dilation during angry, sad, and happy trials and predicted that lower resting RSA and greater pupil dilation would be associated with relatively greater attention to negative stimuli. Results partially confirmed our hypothesis. Lower resting RSA was associated with relatively greater attention to sad faces. Lower resting RSA was also associated with relatively greater attention to angry faces when pupil dilation was lower. RSA may be an important functional correlate of attention that should be explored further in future research.

scholarly journals Normal observers show no evidence for blindsight in facial emotion perception

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sivananda Rajananda ◽  
Jeanette Zhu ◽  
Megan A.K. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Visual Processing ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Ideal Observer ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Discrimination Ability ◽  
The Face ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
Neurologically Intact ◽  
Facial Emotion Perception ◽  
Rule Out

AbstractIt is commonly assumed that normal human observers can exhibit ‘blindsight-like’ behavior: the ability to discriminate or identify a stimulus without being aware of it. However, we recently used a bias-free task to show that what looks like blindsight may in fact be an artifact of typical experimental paradigms’ susceptibility to response bias. While those findings challenge many previous reports of blindsight in normal observers, they do not rule out the possibility that different stimuli or techniques could reveal such perception without awareness. One particularly intriguing candidate for this unconscious perception is emotion processing, as processing of emotional stimuli (e.g. fearful/happy faces) has been reported to potentially bypass conscious visual circuits. Here we used the bias-free blindsight paradigm to investigate whether emotion processing might reveal ‘featural blindsight’, i.e. the ability to identify a face’s emotion without having introspective access to the task-relevant features of the face that led to the discrimination decision. However, despite the purported ability of emotional stimuli to bypass conscious visual processing, we saw no evidence for such emotion processing ‘featural blindsight’: like in our previous study, as soon as participants could identify a face’s emotion they reported introspective access to the task-relevant features, matching predictions of a Bayesian ideal observer. The present results challenge dominant theory, adding to the growing body of evidence that perceptual discrimination ability in the complete absence of introspective access may not be possible for neurologically intact observers.

scholarly journals The Effect of Alexithymia on Attentional Bias Toward Emotional Stimuli in Depression: An Eye-Tracking Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Annemiek Bergman ◽  
Constance Th. W. M. Vissers ◽  
Rose M. Collard ◽  
Philip van Eijndhoven ◽  
Aart H. Schene ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Depressive Disorders ◽  
Influencing Factor ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Moderating Effect ◽  
Eye Tracker ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Attentional Processing

Alexithymia—reflecting deficits in cognitive emotion processing—is highly prevalent in individuals with depressive disorders. Subsequently, mixed evidence for attentional bias is found in these individuals. Alexithymia may be a potential influencing factor for attentional bias in depression. In the current study, 83 currently depressed (CD) and 76 never-depressed (ND) controls completed an eye-tracker task consisting of valenced (non)-social pictures. Alexithymia scores were also included as a moderator as both a continuous and categorical measure (so high vs. low alexithymia). No group difference or moderating effect of alexithymia was found on attentional bias. Thus, alexithymic symptoms, included both dimensionally and categorically, may not influence biased attentional processing in depression compared to ND individuals. Thus, it is important to explore other potential explaining factors for the equivocal results found on biased attentional processing of emotional information in depression.

scholarly journals Alprazolam modulates persistence energy during emotion processing in first-degree relatives of individuals with schizophrenia: a network control study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arun S. Mahadevan ◽  
Eli J. Cornblath ◽  
David M. Lydon-Staley ◽  
Dale Zhou ◽  
Linden Parkes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Processing ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Facial Affect ◽  
Network Control ◽  
State Transitions ◽  
Compensatory Mechanism ◽  
Pharmacological Modulation ◽  
First Degree Relatives ◽  
Affect Processing

AbstractSchizophrenia is marked by deficits in facial affect processing associated with abnormalities in GABAergic circuitry, deficits also found in first-degree relatives. Facial affect processing involves a distributed network of brain regions including limbic regions like amygdala and visual processing areas like fusiform cortex. Pharmacological modulation of GABAergic circuitry using benzodiazepines like alprazolam can be useful for studying this facial affect processing network and associated GABAergic abnormalities in schizophrenia. Here, we use pharmacological modulation and computational modeling to study the contribution of GABAergic abnormalities toward emotion processing deficits in schizophrenia. Specifically, we apply principles from network control theory to model persistence energy – the control energy required to maintain brain activation states – during emotion identification and recall tasks, with and without administration of alprazolam, in a sample of first-degree relatives and healthy controls. Here, persistence energy quantifies the magnitude of theoretical external inputs during the task. We find that alprazolam increases persistence energy in relatives but not in controls during threatening face processing, suggesting a compensatory mechanism given the relative absence of behavioral abnormalities in this sample of unaffected relatives. Further, we demonstrate that regions in the fusiform and occipital cortices are important for facilitating state transitions during facial affect processing. Finally, we uncover spatial relationships (i) between regional variation in differential control energy (alprazolam versus placebo) and (ii) both serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitter systems, indicating that alprazolam may exert its effects by altering neuromodulatory systems. Together, these findings reveal differences in emotion-processing circuitry associated with genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia.

scholarly journals Comparison of Four fMRI Paradigms Probing Emotion Processing

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 525
Author(s):  
Corinna Hartling ◽  
Sophie Metz ◽  
Corinna Pehrs ◽  
Milan Scheidegger ◽  
Rebecca Gruzman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Insula ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Study Planning ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
The Right

Previous fMRI research has applied a variety of tasks to examine brain activity underlying emotion processing. While task characteristics are known to have a substantial influence on the elicited activations, direct comparisons of tasks that could guide study planning are scarce. We aimed to provide a comparison of four common emotion processing tasks based on the same analysis pipeline to suggest tasks best suited for the study of certain target brain regions. We studied an n-back task using emotional words (EMOBACK) as well as passive viewing tasks of emotional faces (FACES) and emotional scenes (OASIS and IAPS). We compared the activation patterns elicited by these tasks in four regions of interest (the amygdala, anterior insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC)) in three samples of healthy adults (N = 45). The EMOBACK task elicited activation in the right dlPFC and bilateral anterior insula and deactivation in the pgACC while the FACES task recruited the bilateral amygdala. The IAPS and OASIS tasks showed similar activation patterns recruiting the bilateral amygdala and anterior insula. We conclude that these tasks can be used to study different regions involved in emotion processing and that the information provided is valuable for future research and the development of fMRI biomarkers.

A Systematic Literature Review of the EFQM Excellence Model from 1991 to 2019

1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Muhammad Yousaf ◽  
Petr Bris
Keyword(s):  
Quality Management ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Future Research ◽  
European Foundation ◽  
The Subject

A systematic literature review (SLR) from 1991 to 2019 is carried out about EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) excellence model in this paper. The aim of the paper is to present state of the art in quantitative research on the EFQM excellence model that will guide future research lines in this field. The articles were searched with the help of six strings and these six strings were executed in three popular databases i.e. Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct. Around 584 peer-reviewed articles examined, which are directly linked with the subject of quantitative research on the EFQM excellence model. About 108 papers were chosen finally, then the purpose, data collection, conclusion, contributions, and type of quantitative of the selected papers are discussed and analyzed briefly in this study. Thus, this study identifies the focus areas of the researchers and knowledge gaps in empirical quantitative literature on the EFQM excellence model. This article also presents the lines of future research.

The Social Neuroscience of Cooperation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Future Research ◽  
A Value ◽  
Group Cooperation ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cooperative Decision Making

We review literature from several fields to describe common experimental tasks used to measure human cooperation as well as the theoretical models that have been used to characterize cooperative decision-making, as well as brain regions implicated in cooperation. Building on work in neuroeconomics, we suggest a value-based account may provide the most powerful understanding the psychology and neuroscience of group cooperation. We also review the role of individual differences and social context in shaping the mental processes that underlie cooperation and consider gaps in the literature and potential directions for future research on the social neuroscience of cooperation. We suggest that this multi-level approach provides a more comprehensive understanding of the mental and neural processes that underlie the decision to cooperate with others.

Depressive Traits and Theory of Mind in Healthy Individuals: A Mediation Study

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas James Rowark
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Statistical Power ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Clinical Sample ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Prepotent Response

Depression has been associated with poor social cognitive functioning, including impaired performance on measures of theory of mind. However, the association between depression and theory of mind performance has been removed when controlling for differences in executive functioning, which is also impacted by depression. Among these executive functions, inhibition of prepotent response has been demonstrated as enabling success on theory of mind tests. In the context of these findings, the current investigation tested whether a relationship could be found between depressive traits and theory of mind in a non-clinical sample, and whether this relationship was mediated by differences in executive control of inhibition. Theory of mind was assessed in 31 healthy individuals using an audio-presented false-belief reasoning task, which also tested baseline performance in non-mental-state reasoning. Inhibition of prepotent response was assessed with interference measures on a Stroop colour-word task, and depressive traits were self-reported through the second version of the Beck Depression Inventory. Mediation analysis revealed that executive control of inhibition did not significantly mediate an indirect effect of depressive traits on theory of mind. It was interpreted that relationships previously found between major depression, executive and social-cognitive functions do not generalise beyond clinical boundaries. However, these findings are discussed in terms of the small sample size, limiting statistical power, and several methodological limitations. Future research should assess the relationship between depressive traits and theory of mind using alternative measures of mental representation, or include a neurocognitive battery assessing executive functions other than inhibition.

scholarly journals Metacognition: ideas and insights from neuro- and educational sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien S. Fleur ◽  
Bert Bredeweg ◽  
Wouter van den Bos
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Metacognitive Knowledge ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Metacognitive Control ◽  
Domain Generality ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Control Research ◽  
Educational Sciences

AbstractMetacognition comprises both the ability to be aware of one’s cognitive processes (metacognitive knowledge) and to regulate them (metacognitive control). Research in educational sciences has amassed a large body of evidence on the importance of metacognition in learning and academic achievement. More recently, metacognition has been studied from experimental and cognitive neuroscience perspectives. This research has started to identify brain regions that encode metacognitive processes. However, the educational and neuroscience disciplines have largely developed separately with little exchange and communication. In this article, we review the literature on metacognition in educational and cognitive neuroscience and identify entry points for synthesis. We argue that to improve our understanding of metacognition, future research needs to (i) investigate the degree to which different protocols relate to the similar or different metacognitive constructs and processes, (ii) implement experiments to identify neural substrates necessary for metacognition based on protocols used in educational sciences, (iii) study the effects of training metacognitive knowledge in the brain, and (iv) perform developmental research in the metacognitive brain and compare it with the existing developmental literature from educational sciences regarding the domain-generality of metacognition.

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