TY - JOUR A1 - Wiebking, Christine A1 - Northoff, Georg T1 - Neural activity during interoceptive awareness and its associations with alexithymia-An fMRI study in major depressive disorder and non-psychiatric controls JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Objective: Alexithymia relates to difficulties recognizing and describing emotions. It has been linked to subjectively increased interoceptive awareness (IA) and to psychiatric illnesses such as major depressive disorder (MDD) and somatization. MDD in turn is characterized by aberrant emotion processing and IA on the subjective as well as on the neural level. However, a link between neural activity in response to IA and alexithymic traits in health and depression remains unclear. Methods: A well-established fMRI task was used to investigate neural activity during IA (heartbeat counting) and exteroceptive awareness (tone counting) in non-psychiatric controls (NC) and MDD. Firstly, comparing MDD and NC, a linear relationship between IA-related activity and scores of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) was investigated through whole-brain regression. Secondly, NC were divided by median-split of TAS scores into groups showing low (NC-low) or high (NC-high) alexithymia. MDD and NC-high showed equally high TAS scores. Subsequently, IA-related neural activity was compared on a whole-brain level between the three independent samples (MDD, NC-low, NC-high). Results: Whole-brain regressions between MDD and NC revealed neural differences during IA as a function of TAS-DD (subscale difficulty describing feelings) in the supragenual anterior cingulate cortex (sACC; BA 24/32), which were due to negative associations between TAS-DD and IA-related activity in NC. Contrasting NC subgroups after median-split on a whole-brain level, high TAS scores were associated with decreased neural activity during IA in the sACC and increased insula activity. Though having equally high alexithymia scores, NC-high showed increased insula activity during IA compared to MDD, whilst both groups showed decreased activity in the sACC. Conclusions: Within the context of decreased sACC activity during IA in alexithymia (NC-high and MDD), increased insula activity might mirror a compensatory mechanism in NC-high, which is disrupted in MDD. KW - major depressive disorder KW - alexithymia KW - interoceptive awareness KW - insula KW - sACC KW - interoception KW - fMRI KW - neuroimaging Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00589 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 6 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiebking, Christine A1 - Northoff, Georg T1 - Neural activity during interoceptive awareness and its associations with alexithymia BT - An fMRI study in major depressive disorder and non-psychiatric controls JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Objective: Alexithymia relates to difficulties recognizing and describing emotions. It has been linked to subjectively increased interoceptive awareness (IA) and to psychiatric illnesses such as major depressive disorder (MDD) and somatization. MDD in turn is characterized by aberrant emotion processing and IA on the subjective as well as on the neural level. However, a link between neural activity in response to IA and alexithymic traits in health and depression remains unclear. Methods: A well-established fMRI task was used to investigate neural activity during IA (heartbeat counting) and exteroceptive awareness (tone counting) in non-psychiatric controls (NC) and MDD. Firstly, comparing MDD and NC, a linear relationship between IA-related activity and scores of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) was investigated through whole-brain regression. Secondly, NC were divided by median-split of TAS scores into groups showing low (NC-low) or high (NC-high) alexithymia. MDD and NC-high showed equally high TAS scores. Subsequently, IA-related neural activity was compared on a whole-brain level between the three independent samples (MDD, NC-low, NC-high). Results: Whole-brain regressions between MDD and NC revealed neural differences during IA as a function of TAS-DD (subscale difficulty describing feelings) in the supragenual anterior cingulate cortex (sACC; BA 24/32), which were due to negative associations between TAS-DD and IA-related activity in NC. Contrasting NC subgroups after median-split on a whole-brain level, high TAS scores were associated with decreased neural activity during IA in the sACC and increased insula activity. Though having equally high alexithymia scores, NC-high showed increased insula activity during IA compared to MDD, whilst both groups showed decreased activity in the sACC. Conclusions: Within the context of decreased sACC activity during IA in alexithymia (NC-high and MDD), increased insula activity might mirror a compensatory mechanism in NC-high, which is disrupted in MDD. KW - major depressive disorder KW - alexithymia KW - interoceptive awareness KW - insula KW - sACC KW - fMRI KW - neuroimaging Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00589 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 6 IS - 589 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wachs, Sebastian A1 - Vazsonyi, Alexander T. A1 - Wright, Michelle F. A1 - Ksinan Jiskrova, Gabriela T1 - Cross-National Associations Among Cyberbullying Victimization, Self-Esteem, and Internet Addiction BT - Direct and Indirect Effects of Alexithymia JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - The relationship among cyberbullying victimization, lower self-esteem, and internet addiction has been well-established. Yet, little research exists that explains the nature of these associations, and no previous work has considered the inability to identify or describe one’s emotions, namely, alexithymia, as a potential mediator of these links. The present study sought to investigate the indirect effects of cyberbullying victimization on self-esteem and internet addiction, mediated by alexithymia. The sample consisted of 1,442 participants between 12 and 17 years (Mage = 14.17, SD = 1.38, 51.5% male) from Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. Results showed a direct relationship between cyberbullying victimization and self-esteem and an indirect association mediated by alexithymia in the Dutch sample. However, in the German and U.S. samples, only an indirect relationship via alexithymia, but not a direct effect of cyberbullying victimization on self-esteem, was found. Consistent across the three country samples, cyberbullying victimization and internet addiction were directly and also indirectly associated via alexithymia. In sum, findings indicate that alexithymia might help better understand which detrimental effects cyberbullying victimization has on adolescent psychological health. Thus, cyberbullying prevention programs should consider implementing elements that educate adolescents on the ability to identify and describe their own emotions. KW - cyberbullying victimization KW - alexithymia KW - self-esteem KW - internet addiction KW - adolescents Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01368 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 11 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wachs, Sebastian A1 - Bilz, Ludwig A1 - Fischer, Saskia M. A1 - Wright, Michelle F. T1 - Do emotional components of alexithymia mediate the interplay between cyberbullying victimization and perpetration? JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health N2 - A substantial amount of research has revealed that cyberbully-victims have more emotional and behavioral problems than either cyberbullying victims or perpetrators. However, until now, little research has been conducted into the factors that contribute to the interplay between cyberbullying victimization and perpetration. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cyberbullying victimization, perpetration, and two emotional components of alexithymia, namely difficulties in identifying and describing one's own feelings. Self-report questions were administered to 1549 adolescents between 12 and 18 years old (M = 14.51; SD = 1.68; 42.1% (n = 652) male) from Germany and Thailand. Results showed that cyberbullying victimization and alexithymia are associated with cyberbullying perpetration. Moreover, alexithymia mediated the associations between cyberbullying victimization and adolescents' cyberbullying perpetration. Consequently, we suggest that the ability to describe and identify one's own feelings might be important for understanding the link between cyberbullying, victimization, and perpetration. The results may help develop prevention and intervention programs focused on reducing cyberbullying. KW - alexithymia KW - cyberbully-victims KW - cyberbullying KW - cybervictimization KW - mediation Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121530 SN - 1660-4601 VL - 14 IS - 12 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER -