We found a clinically significant decrease in social anhedonia and alexithymia among the participants, and these aspects were directly targeted by CREST.
Likewise, paradoxically, decreased grey matter in the right ACC in alexithymia, which is highly associated with clinical depression, has been found to correlate with blunted empathy toward other-pain but increased pain sensitivity during self-pain [ 65, 67, 68].
Mean level reduction of total TAS-20 and two subfactors demonstrated no absolute stability, but change in alexithymia differed for patients with low, moderate and high alexithymia scores.
The mothers of children with headaches didn't score higher in alexithymia compared to other mothers.
Two pioneering studies suggested important genetic influences in alexithymia [12, 13].
Moreover, participants in the SAH-M condition self-reported significantly greater reductions in alexithymia over time relative to ETAU participants.
Few studies have employed the affective priming paradigm in alexithymia.
Given the difficulty to identify emotions in alexithymia, we further hypothesized a reduced sensitivity to affective mismatches in alexithymia, reflected in diminished N400 amplitudes in response to affectively incongruent compared to congruent conditions as a function of alexithymia.
The TAS-20 questionnaire, used here in agreement with previous studies on affective priming in alexithymia [23] [26], [40], covers only type II alexithymia.
Taken together, previous studies using affective priming paradigms in alexithymia provide preliminary evidence for an impact of alexithymia on the automatic processing of visual emotional stimuli.
