Insula reactivity mediates subjective isolation stress in alexithymia.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Morr M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8319294 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The long-standing hypothesis that emotions rely on bodily states is back in the spotlight. This has led some researchers to suggest that alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness, reflects a general deficit in interoception. However, tests of this hypothesis have relied on heterogeneous assessment methods, leading to inconsistent results. To shed some light on this issue, we administered a battery of self-report questionnaires of interoception and alexithymia to three samples from Italy, the U.S., and Singapore (N = 814). Correlation and machine learning analyses showed that alexithymia was associated with deficits in both subjective interoceptive accuracy and attention. Alexithymics' interoceptive deficits were primarily related to difficulty identifying and describing feelings. Interoception showed a weaker association with externally-oriented thinking as operationalized by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and no association with the affective dimension of alexithymia later introduced by the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ). We discuss our results with reference to the theoretical and psychometric differences between these two measures of alexithymia and their shortcomings. Overall, our results support the view that interoceptive deficits are a core component of alexithymia, although the latter cannot be reduced to the former.
| S-EPMC8668127 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Distorted empathic processing has been observed across multiple psychiatric disorders. Simulation theory provides a theoretical framework that proposes a mechanism through which empathy difficulties may arise. Specifically, introspection-centric simulation theory (IST) predicts that an inability to accurately interpret and describe internal affective states may lead to empathy difficulties. The purpose of this review is to synthesize and summarize an empirical literature suggesting that simulation theory provides insights into a cognitive and neurobiological mechanism (i.e., alexithymia and insula pathology) that negatively impacts empathic processing, in addition to how disruptions in these processes manifest across psychiatric disorders. Specifically, we review an emerging non-clinical literature suggesting that consistent with IST, alexithymia and associated insula pathology leads to empathy deficits. Subsequently, we highlight clinical research suggesting that a large number of disorders characterized by empathy pathology also feature alexithymia. Collectively, these findings motivate the importance for future work to establish the role of alexithymia in contributing to empathy deficits across clinical symptoms and disorders. The current review suggests that simulation theory provides a tractable conceptual platform for identifying a potential common cognitive and neural marker that is associated with empathy deficits across a wide array of diagnostic classes.
| S-EPMC5742870 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Difficulties in social cognition are well recognized in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (henceforth 'autism'). Here we focus on one crucial aspect of social cognition: the ability to empathize with the feelings of another. In contrast to theory of mind, a capacity that has often been observed to be impaired in individuals with autism, much less is known about the capacity of individuals with autism for affect sharing. Based on previous data suggesting that empathy deficits in autism are a function of interoceptive deficits related to alexithymia, we aimed to investigate empathic brain responses in autistic and control participants with high and low degrees of alexithymia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured empathic brain responses with an 'empathy for pain' paradigm assessing empathic brain responses in a real-life social setting that does not rely on attention to, or recognition of, facial affect cues. Confirming previous findings, empathic brain responses to the suffering of others were associated with increased activation in left anterior insula and the strength of this signal was predictive of the degree of alexithymia in both autistic and control groups but did not vary as a function of group. Importantly, there was no difference in the degree of empathy between autistic and control groups after accounting for alexithymia. These findings suggest that empathy deficits observed in autism may be due to the large comorbidity between alexithymic traits and autism, rather than representing a necessary feature of the social impairments in autism.
| S-EPMC2859151 | biostudies-literature
Project description:A number of empirical and theoretical reports link altered interoceptive processing to anxiety. However, the mechanistic understanding of the relationship between the two remains poor. We propose that a heightened sensibility for interoceptive signals, combined with a difficulty in attributing these sensations to emotions, increases an individual's vulnerability to anxiety. In order to investigate this, a large sample of general population adults were recruited and completed self-report measures of interoceptive sensibility, trait anxiety and alexithymia. Results confirmed that the positive association between interoceptive sensibility and trait anxiety was partially mediated by alexithymia, such that those most at risk for clinically significant levels of trait anxiety have both significantly higher levels of interoceptive sensibility and alexithymia. A subsequent factor analysis confirmed the independence of the three measures. Altered interoceptive processing in combination with alexithymia, increased the risk for anxiety above and beyond altered interoceptive processing alone. We suggest that a heightened sensibility for interoceptive signals, combined with a difficulty in attributing these sensations to emotions, leaves these sensations vulnerable to catastrophizing interpretation. Interventions that target the attribution of bodily sensations may prove valuable in reducing anxiety.
| S-EPMC6136731 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Little is known about the specific neural mechanisms through which cognitive factors influence craving and associated brain responses, despite the initial success of cognitive therapies in treating drug addiction. In this study, we investigated how cognitive factors such as beliefs influence subjective craving and neural activities in nicotine-addicted individuals using model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neuropharmacology. Deprived smokers (N = 24) participated in a two-by-two balanced placebo design, which crossed beliefs about nicotine (told "nicotine" vs. told "no nicotine") with the nicotine content in a cigarette (nicotine vs. placebo) which participants smoked immediately before performing a fMRI task involving reward learning. Subjects' reported craving was measured both before smoking and after the fMRI session. We found that first, in the presence of nicotine, smokers demonstrated significantly reduced craving after smoking when told "nicotine in cigarette" but showed no change in craving when told "no nicotine." Second, neural activity in the insular cortex related to craving was only significant when smokers were told "nicotine" but not when told "no nicotine." Both effects were absent in the placebo condition. Third, insula activation related to computational learning signals was modulated by belief about nicotine regardless of nicotine's presence. These results suggest that belief about nicotine has a strong impact on subjective craving and insula responses related to both craving and learning in deprived smokers, providing insights into the complex nature of belief-drug interactions.
| S-EPMC4942468 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Tourette syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder, characterized by motor and phonic tics. Tics are typically experienced as avolitional, compulsive, and associated with premonitory urges. They are exacerbated by stress and can be triggered by external stimuli, including social cues like the actions and facial expressions of others. Importantly, emotional social stimuli, with angry facial stimuli potentially the most potent social threat cue, also trigger behavioural reactions in healthy individuals, suggesting that such mechanisms may be particularly sensitive in people with Tourette syndrome. Twenty-one participants with Tourette syndrome and 21 healthy controls underwent functional MRI while viewing faces wearing either neutral or angry expressions to quantify group differences in neural activity associated with processing social information. Simultaneous video recordings of participants during neuroimaging enabled us to model confounding effects of tics on task-related responses to the processing of faces. In both Tourette syndrome and control participants, face stimuli evoked enhanced activation within canonical face perception regions, including the occipital face area and fusiform face area. However, the Tourette syndrome group showed additional responses within the anterior insula to both neutral and angry faces. Functional connectivity during face viewing was then examined in a series of psychophysiological interactions. In participants with Tourette syndrome, the insula showed functional connectivity with a set of cortical regions previously implicated in tic generation: the presupplementary motor area, premotor cortex, primary motor cortex, and the putamen. Furthermore, insula functional connectivity with the globus pallidus and thalamus varied in proportion to tic severity, while supplementary motor area connectivity varied in proportion to premonitory sensations, with insula connectivity to these regions increasing to a greater extent in patients with worse symptom severity. In addition, the occipital face area showed increased functional connectivity in Tourette syndrome participants with posterior cortical regions, including primary somatosensory cortex, and occipital face area connectivity with primary somatosensory and primary motor cortices varied in proportion to tic severity. There were no significant psychophysiological interactions in controls. These findings highlight a potential mechanism in Tourette syndrome through which heightened representation within insular cortex of embodied affective social information may impact the reactivity of subcortical motor pathways, supporting programmed motor actions that are causally implicated in tic generation. Medicinal and psychological therapies that focus on reducing insular hyper-reactivity to social stimuli may have potential benefit for tic reduction in people with Tourette syndrome.
| S-EPMC6202569 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:Research in adolescents and adults has suggested that altered neural processing of reward following early life adversity is a highly promising depressive intermediate phenotype. However, very little is known about how stress response, neural processing of reward, and depression are related in very young children. The present study examined the concurrent associations between cortisol response following a stressor, functional brain activity to reward, and depression severity in children 4 to 6 years old. METHODS:Medication-naïve children 4 to 6 years old (N = 52) participated in a study using functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess neural reactivity to reward, including gain, loss, and neutral outcomes. Parent-reported child depression severity and child cortisol response following stress were also measured. RESULTS:Greater caudate and medial prefrontal cortex reactivity to gain outcomes and increased amygdala reactivity to salient (i.e., both gain and loss) outcomes were observed. Higher total cortisol output following a stressor was associated with increased depression severity and reduced amygdala reactivity to salient outcomes. Amygdala reactivity was also inversely associated with depression severity and was found to mediate the relationship between cortisol output and depression severity. CONCLUSIONS:Results suggest that altered neural processing of reward is already related to increased cortisol output and depression severity in preschoolers. These results also demonstrate an important role for amygdala function as a mediator of this relationship at a very early age. Our results further underscore early childhood as an important developmental period for understanding the neurobiological correlates of early stress and increased risk for depression.
| S-EPMC5723551 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background Smartphone addiction (SA) has become a social problem that affects peoples’ quality of life and is frequently reported to be correlated with alexithymia, avoidant or anxious attachment styles, and subjective well-being. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between SA and alexithymia, attachment style, and subjective well-being. Methods A meta-analysis was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The following electronic databases were searched: PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, PsycINFO, PsycArticles, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WANFANG DATA, and Chongqing VIP Information Co., Ltd. (VIP). Stata 16.0 was used to analyze the overall effect and test the moderating effect. Results One hundred and ten studies were included, involving a total of 96,680 participants. SA had a significantly high positive correlation with alexithymia (r = 0.40), attachment anxiety (r = 0.37), and negative emotions (r = 0.31), and a low positive correlation with attachment avoidance (r = 0.17). In addition, there was a high negative correlation between SA and subjective well-being (r = –0.33) and a low negative correlation between SA, life satisfaction (r = –0.17), and positive emotions (r = –0.18). A moderation analysis revealed that age significantly moderated the relationship between SA and positive emotions. The tools for measuring SA significantly moderated the relationship between SA, alexithymia, attachment anxiety, and subjective well-being. Meanwhile, subjective well-being measurement tools significantly moderated the relationships between SA, subjective well-being, and negative emotions. Conclusion SA was closely related to alexithymia, attachment style, and subjective well-being. In the future, longitudinal research can be conducted to better investigate the dynamic changes in the relationship between them. Systematic review registration [www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/], identifier [CRD42022334798].
| S-EPMC9481561 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The aim of this study was to examine differences in brain neural activation in response to monosodium glutamate (MSG), the representative component of umami, between patients with bulimia nervosa (BN) and healthy women (HW) controls. We analyzed brain activity after ingestion of an MSG solution using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a group of women with BN (n?=?18) and a group of HW participants (n?=?18). Both groups also provided a subjective assessment of the MSG solution via a numerical rating scale. The BN group subjectively rated the MSG solution lower in pleasantness and liking than the control group, although no difference in subjective intensity was noted. The fMRI results demonstrated greater activation of the right insula in the BN group versus the control group. Compared with the HW controls, the BN patients demonstrated both altered taste perception-related brain activity and more negative hedonic scores in response to MSG stimuli. Different hedonic evaluation, expressed as the relative low pleasing taste of umami tastant and associated with altered insula function, may explain disturbed eating behaviors, including the imbalance in food choices, in BN patients.
| S-EPMC5622337 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundNon-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a major, trans-diagnostic mental health problem among adolescents. Alexithymia has been identified as a developmental risk factor for NSSI. Research on how alexithymia relates to the neurobiology of automatic emotion processing is only beginning to emerge. This study evaluates the relationship between alexithymic features and neural responses to automatic processing of emotional content in adolescents with NSSI.Methods25 female adolescents (ages 13-21) with a history of repeated engagement in NSSI completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale and underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a task in which participants were exposed to masked emotions.ResultsOne facet of alexithymia, limited internal emotion awareness or externally-oriented thinking (EOT), was related to differential reactivity to masked emotional faces in clusters in the right supramarginal gyrus and right inferior frontal gyrus. Follow-up assessment of regional reactivity revealed that greater EOT is associated with lower activation to masked happy faces but higher activation to masked fearful faces. Other facets of alexithymia did not show relationships with reactivity to masked emotional faces.LimitationsThis is a cross-sectional and small sample that only includes females, which may attenuate generalizability of findings.ConclusionsWe report neural correlates of multiple facets of alexithymia in adolescents with NSSI. Among adolescents who self-harm, those with higher levels of EOT may be less alert to subtle positively-valenced emotion cues. For this subset of adolescents with NSSI, interventions designed to enhance mental representation of emotional responses and attention to positive emotions may be appropriate.
| S-EPMC6724702 | biostudies-literature