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

NCT00830752 · Status: UNKNOWN · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 70

Last updated 2009-01-28

No results posted yet for this study

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

Conditions

  • Alexithymia

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Charite University, Berlin, Germany

    lead OTHER

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
60 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2009-02-28
Primary Completion
2009-08-31
Completion
2009-12-31

Countries

  • Germany

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00830752 on ClinicalTrials.gov