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

NCT ID: NCT00830752

Last Updated: 2009-01-28

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: UNKNOWN
• Total Enrollment: 70 participants
• Study Classification: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2009-02-28
• Study Completion Date: 2009-12-31

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

Conditions

Alexithymia

Study Design

• Observational Model Type: CASE_ONLY
• Study Time Perspective: PROSPECTIVE

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• scoring high on the TAS-20

Exclusion Criteria

• personal history of a mental disorder
• currently mentally ill

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 60 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Charite University, Berlin, Germany

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Charite

Locations

Charite-Dept. of Psychiatry-Campus Benjamin Franklin

Berlin, , Germany

Countries

Germany

Facility Contacts

Isabella JE Heuser, MD, PhD

Role: primary

isabella.heuser@charite.de

++493084458701

Claudia Crayen, MS

Role: backup

claudia.crayen@fu-berlin.de

++493083857839

Other Identifiers

ALEX 2009

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id