AI Article Synopsis
- Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in recognizing and expressing emotions, possibly linked to changes in brain structure, though the exact neuroanatomical links have been unclear.
- A meta-analysis of 17 studies involving 2,586 individuals with varying levels of alexithymia revealed consistently smaller gray matter volumes in key brain regions, such as the left insula and left amygdala, among those with higher alexithymia.
- These findings suggest that reduced volume in these areas, which play crucial roles in processing emotions, may contribute to the challenges in emotional identification and expression seen in individuals with high levels of alexithymia.
Article Abstract
Alexithymia refers to deficiencies in identifying and expressing emotions. This might be related to changes in structural brain volumes, but its neuroanatomical basis remains uncertain as studies have shown heterogeneous findings. Therefore, we conducted a parametric coordinate-based meta-analysis. We identified seventeen structural neuroimaging studies (including a total of 2586 individuals with different levels of alexithymia) investigating the association between gray matter volume and alexithymia. Volumes of the left insula, left amygdala, orbital frontal cortex and striatum were consistently smaller in people with high levels of alexithymia. These areas are important for emotion perception and emotional experience. Smaller volumes in these areas might lead to deficiencies in appropriately identifying and expressing emotions. These findings provide the first quantitative integration of results pertaining to the structural neuroanatomical basis of alexithymia.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.01.004 | DOI Listing |
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Article Synopsis
- Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in recognizing and expressing emotions, possibly linked to changes in brain structure, though the exact neuroanatomical links have been unclear.
- A meta-analysis of 17 studies involving 2,586 individuals with varying levels of alexithymia revealed consistently smaller gray matter volumes in key brain regions, such as the left insula and left amygdala, among those with higher alexithymia.
- These findings suggest that reduced volume in these areas, which play crucial roles in processing emotions, may contribute to the challenges in emotional identification and expression seen in individuals with high levels of alexithymia.
Computational meta-analysis of statistical parametric maps in major depression.
Hum Brain Mapp
April 2016
Division of Psychiatry, the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Objective: Several neuroimaging meta-analyses have summarized structural brain changes in major depression using coordinate-based methods. These methods might be biased toward brain regions where significant differences were found in the original studies. In this study, a novel voxel-based technique is implemented that estimates and meta-analyses between-group differences in grey matter from individual MRI studies, which are then applied to the study of major depression.
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