Neurobiological, Neuropsychological,Linguistic and Gestural Processes and Phenomena in Individuals With Alexithymia

• Conditions: Alexithymia

• Registration Number: NCT00830752
• Lead Sponsor: Charite University, Berlin, Germany

Brief Summary

The syndrome of extremely restricted emotional competence, alexithymia, was originally conceptualized in psychoanalytic research and is now empirically and experimentally studied in clinical psychology and psychological medicine within the context of emotion regulation using neuroscientific techniques. Alexithymia refers to an individual's inability or impaired ability to name or express feelings and to distinguish them from the physical consequences of an acute or chronic stress reaction. Modern "brain-body-interface" research suggests that alexithymia represents a complex deficiency in cognitive processing and emotional regulatory processes. The neurobiological basis is assumed to be a preconscious, automatic and involuntary information transfer to the amygdalae of acquired representations of emotional contents stored in ventromedial prefrontal cortical areas.

Alexithymia is not just "emotional coldness", i.e. a limited emotionality, but essentially the detachment of feelings from language. In alexithymia the link between affective phenomena and language, understood as media-supported sign practices, is insufficient or even absent.

The purpose of our observational study is to better understand the neurobiological and neuropsychological as well as linguistic and gestural processes and determinants of this phenomenon

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Status Verified: 2009-01
• Study First Submitted: 2009-01-27
• Study First Submitted QC: 2009-01-27
• Last Update Submitted: 2009-01-27
• Study First Posted: 2009-01-28
• Last Update Posted: 2009-01-28
• Study Start: 2009-02
• Primary Completion: 2009-08
• Study Completion: 2009-12

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: UNKNOWN
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 70

Inclusion Criteria

• scoring high on the TAS-20

Exclusion Criteria

• personal history of a mental disorder
• currently mentally ill

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Charite-Dept. of Psychiatry-Campus Benjamin Franklin; 🇩🇪 Berlin, Germany