An FMRI Study On Emotion Regulation In Alexithymia

Objective: To search for differential cerebral regional activation in response to emotional stimuli in subjects with alexithymia ;used functional MRI to identify the neural networks underlying the ability to control and modulate instinctive emotional reactions through intellectual processes.Methods: Two groups of 15 female students each were selected from 432 healthy subjects on the basis of high or low scores on the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared the two groups for their regional cerebral activation in response to the presentation of pictures with validated positive or negative arousal capabilities;Subjects either matched the affect of one of two faces to that of a simultaneously presented target face (a perceptual task) or identified the affect of a target face by choosing one of two simultaneously presented linguistic labels (an intellectual task) during the second part fMRI scan.Results: Subjects with alexithymia demonstrated less cerebral activation in the mediofrontal-cingulate cortex in response to highly negative stimuli and more activation in the anteriorcingulate, left superior frontal gyrus, and anterior central gyrus in response to highly positive stimuli than those without alexithymia. Conclusion: These findings provide direct evidence that alexith-ymia,a personality trait playing a role in affect regulation, is linked with differences in anterior cingulate and mediofrontal activity during emotional stimuli processing.