Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract/Objectives

Alexithymia has been considered an important risk factor for psychopathology and may influence individuals’ vulnerability to socially stressful situations. However, longitudinal evidence regarding attentional bias toward potential social threats and its underlying neural mechanisms in individuals with alexithymia has remained limited. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to follow individuals with alexithymia over a one-year period, and a socio-emotional Stroop task (social vs. nonsocial × negative vs. neutral) was employed to examine the effects of sociality and emotional valence on implicit word processing. Brain activation and functional connectivity analyses were conducted to assess dysregulation in brain regions associated with socio-emotional concepts and their interconnections. Furthermore, we examined whether neural measures at Time 1 predicted changes in psychiatric symptoms six months later, thereby identifying neurobiomarkers associated with symptom trajectories.

Results/Contributions

This study investigated attentional bias toward socio-emotional concepts and its neural mechanisms in individuals with alexithymia. Using a socio-emotional Stroop task combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging, we compared neural responses between individuals with high and low alexithymia during the processing of social versus nonsocial and negative versus neutral words. The results demonstrated that alexithymia modulated the interaction between sociality and emotional valence. Individuals with high alexithymia showed greater activation in the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and mentalizing-related temporal regions when processing negative social words, indicating altered socio-emotional processing. Moreover, orbitofrontal cortex activation was negatively associated with cognitive reappraisal ability, suggesting reduced emotion regulation efficiency in high alexithymia individuals. Together, these findings suggest that dysregulation within socio-emotional brain networks may underlie heightened vulnerability to stress and psychopathology in alexithymia.

Keywords

Alexithymia, social, attentional bias, fMRI

Contact Information

李姝慧
sh.lee@mx.nthu.edu.tw