Effects of alexithymia on the activity of the anterior and posterior areas of the cortex of the right hemisphere in positive and negative emotional activation.

The aim of the present work was to assess the effects of alexithymia (a psychoemotional disorder associated with difficulties in identifying and describing personal feelings) on regional activity in the cerebral cortex during positive and negative emotional activation in a non-clinical set of subjects. EEG (62-channel) recordings were made during presentation of special emotional video clips to alexithymics (17 subjects) and controls (27 subjects). Alexithymia was found to influence EEG activity in the theta-2, alpha-1, and alpha-2 ranges; alexithymics showed greater reactivity in the anterior and/or posterior areas of the cortex of the right hemisphere in all frequency ranges during watching of both positive and negative clips. The similarity of the responses of alexithymics in conditions of positive and negative emotional activation identifies the increase in emotional reactivity, independent of the sign of the incoming emotional information, as non-specific. This phenomenon may provide evidence of the need for recruiting additional cognitive resources for identifying emotional feelings in relation to the impairments of the symbolic perception of emotional information seen in alexithymics observed here.