• search hit 2 of 5
Back to Result List

Neural activity during interoceptive awareness and its associations with alexithymia-An fMRI study in major depressive disorder and non-psychiatric controls

  • 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,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.show moreshow less

Export metadata

Additional Services

Search Google Scholar Statistics
Metadaten
Author details:Christine Wiebking, Georg Northoff
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00589
ISSN:1664-1078
Pubmed ID:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26074827
Title of parent work (English):Frontiers in psychology
Publisher:Frontiers Research Foundation
Place of publishing:Lausanne
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2015
Publication year:2015
Release date:2017/03/27
Tag:alexithymia; fMRI; insula; interoception; interoceptive awareness; major depressive disorder; neuroimaging; sACC
Volume:6
Number of pages:16
Funding institution:German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG); Open Access Publication Fund of the University of Potsdam
Organizational units:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Sport- und Gesundheitswissenschaften
Peer review:Referiert
Publishing method:Open Access
Institution name at the time of the publication:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Sportwissenschaft
Accept ✔
This website uses technically necessary session cookies. By continuing to use the website, you agree to this. You can find our privacy policy here.