Changes in brain activity of somatoform disorder patients during emotional empathy after multimodal psychodynamic psychotherapy.

ABSTRACT: Somatoform disorder patients show a variety of emotional disturbances including impaired emotion recognition and increased empathic distress. In a previous paper, our group showed that several brain regions involved in emotional processing, such as the parahippocampal gyrus and other regions, were less activated in pre-treatment somatoform disorder patients (compared to healthy controls) during an empathy task. Since the parahippocampal gyrus is involved in emotional memory, its decreased activation might reflect the repression of emotional memories (which-according to psychoanalytical concepts-plays an important role in somatoform disorder). Psychodynamic psychotherapy aims at increasing the understanding of emotional conflicts as well as uncovering repressed emotions. We were interested,

SUBMITTER: de Greck M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3744921 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature