Skip to content

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

Understanding Alexithymia

Status
UNKNOWN
Phases
Unknown
Study type
Observational
Source
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry ID
NCT00830752
Acronym
ALEX
Enrollment
70
Registered
2009-01-28
Start date
2009-02-28
Completion date
2009-12-31
Last updated
2009-01-28

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Alexithymia

Keywords

alexithymia

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

Interventions

None listed

Sponsors

Charite University, Berlin, Germany
Lead SponsorOTHER

Study design

Observational model
CASE_ONLY
Time perspective
PROSPECTIVE

Eligibility

Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 60 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes

Inclusion criteria

* scoring high on the TAS-20

Exclusion criteria

* personal history of a mental disorder * currently mentally ill

Countries

Germany

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026