Effects of alexithymia and empathy on the neural processing of social and monetary rewards

Goerlich, Katharina S.; Votinov, Mikhail; Lammertz, Sarah E.; Winkler, Lina; Spreckelmeyer, Katja N.; Habel, Ute; Gründer, Gerhard; Gossen, Anna

doi:10.1007/s00429-016-1339-1

Cited by 27 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…In line with the findings reported above, the results of a recent fMRI study in our lab provided evidence for distinct effects of the alexithymia facets on the processing of rewards (Goerlich et al, 2017). While participants anticipated social rewards (anticipation phase), DIF scores correlated with activity in the subgenual and perigenual ACC and the adjacent ventromedial PFC.…”

Section: Functional Imagingsupporting

confidence: 88%

The Multifaceted Nature of Alexithymia – A Neuroscientific Perspective

Goerlich

2018

Front. Psychol.

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Neuroscientific studies have mostly employed the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; Bagby et al., 1994a) for the assessment of alexithymia, a self-report scale that assesses the alexithymia facets difficulty identifying feelings, difficulty describing feelings, and externally oriented thinking. These facets can be considered to capture difficulties in the cognitive processing of emotions associated with alexithymia. However, Nemiah and Sifneos’ original conceptualization of alexithymia included also an affective component, a lack of imaginative capacities, which cannot be assessed using the TAS-20. Aiming to capture the entire alexithymia construct, the Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ; Vorst and Bermond, 2001) was developed, a self-report scale which assesses two affective facets (difficulty fantasizing and difficulty emotionalizing) in addition to three cognitive facets. Based on these facets, an affective and a cognitive dimension of alexithymia can be distinguished. By now, several neuroscientific studies have investigated the neural signatures of the different facets and dimensions of alexithymia. Here, I provide an overview of the history of the alexithymia facets and dimensions and review findings provided by functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies that differentiated between the alexithymia facets and/or its affective and cognitive dimensions. I then provide a synopsis of the current neuroscientific evidence for dissociable substrates of alexithymia facets and dimensions. Finally, the scientific value and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

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Section: Functional Imagingsupporting

confidence: 88%

The Multifaceted Nature of Alexithymia – A Neuroscientific Perspective

Goerlich

2018

Front. Psychol.

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“…monetary). One prominent hypothesis states that the anticipation and receipt of social incentives engages both a generalist neural network that consists of brain regions involved in the processing of incentives irrespective of their type (such as the basal ganglia), and a specialist network of regions specifically involved in the processing of social information (such as the temporoparietal junction, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the precuneus, and the superior temporal gyrus) (Barman et al, 2015a;Goerlich et al, 2017a;Spreckelmeyer et al, 2013a). This hypothesis has been challenged though by at least two recent meta-analyses, the results of which were consistent with the idea that a general-purpose brain system is involved in the anticipation of incentives irrespective of their type.…”

Section: Brain Regions Involved In the Anticipation Of Social Rewardsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the one hand, there is evidence that the processing of social incentives frequently evokes the activity of generic brain regions involved in reward prediction and value encoding, such as the striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex (Barman et al, 2015b;Rademacher et al, 2014;Spreckelmeyer et al, 2009). On the other hand, some studies have also suggested that the processing of social incentives might involve additional brain regions thought to be critical for socialcognitive processes, such as the temporoparietal junction, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, and superior temporal gyrus (Barman et al, 2015b;Goerlich et al, 2017b;Spreckelmeyer et al, 2013b). However, a clear picture of the brain circuits underpinning social reward and punishment processing in the human brain is still missing due to inconsistencies in the areas identified across individual studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping social reward and punishment processing in the human brain: A voxel-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging findings using the Social Incentive Delay task

Martins

Rademacher

Gabay

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Highlights• Voxel-based meta-analysis of the neural underpinnings of social incentive processing • We map the brain regions involved in the processing of social incentives in humans • We identify new regions missed in individual studies as a result of lack of power • Our work can inform research on pathological brain processing of social incentives ABSTRACT Social incentives (rewards or punishments) motivate human learning and behaviour, and alterations in the brain circuits involved in the processing social incentives have been linked with several neuropsychiatric disorders.However, questions still remain about the exact neural substrates implicated in social incentive processing. Here, we conducted four Anisotropic Effect Size Signed Differential Mapping voxel-based meta-analyses of fMRI studies investigating the neural correlates of the anticipation and receipt of social rewards and punishments using the Social Incentive Delay task. We map the regions involved in each of these four processes in the human brain, identify decreases in the BOLD signal during the anticipation of both social reward and punishment avoidance that were missed in individual studies due to a lack of power, and characterise the effect size and direction of changes in the BOLD signal for each brain area. Our results provide a better understanding of the brain circuitry involved in social incentive processing and can inform hypotheses about potentially disrupted brain areas linked with dysfunctional social incentive processing during disease.

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“…Due to its significant role in social interaction, pain empathy has become an intense area of research in psychology and neuroscience ( Sassenrath et al, 2016 ; Yang et al, 2017 ). Recently, a large body of studies have investigated whether and how pain empathy is affected by social factors such as sense of fairness ( Singer et al, 2006 ), monetary reward ( Guo et al, 2012 ; Goerlich et al, 2016 ), affective preference ( Wang et al, 2014 ; Yang et al, 2014 ), social distance ( Zaki, 2014 ; Wang et al, 2016 ), as well as competition and cooperation ( Cui et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive Intensity Modulates the Pain Empathy Response: An Event-Related Potentials Study

Luo

Pang

et al. 2018

Front. Psychol.

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Previous studies have widely reported that competition modulates an individual’s ability to empathize with pain experienced by others. What remains to be clarified, however, is how modulations in the intensity of competition might affect this type of empathy. To investigate this, we first used a Eriksen Flanker task to set different competitive intensity context (high competitive intensity, HCI; medium competitive intensity, MCI; low competitive intensity, LCI). Then we used a recognition task as a competitive task, in which we recorded event-related potentials (ERP) while participants viewed static images of body parts in painful and non-painful situations. Participants were informed that both sets of images depicted an opponent that they were required to play against in the recognition task that varied in levels of competitive intensity according to condition (HCI, MCI, and LCI). We observed an early N2 differentiation between pain and no-pain stimuli over the frontal area under MCI and LCI conditions, but this was not detected under HCI condition. Moreover, we observed a pattern of pain and no-pain differentiation for the late LPP over the frontal and centro-parietal regions under HCI, MCI, and LCI condition. As the pain empathy response is indexed by pain and no-pain differentiation, these results indicate a down-regulation of pain empathy response attributable to a high level of competition. With its very early onset, this effect appears to inhibit bottom-up processing of the ability to perceive pain experienced by an opponent. Our results provide neuroscientific evidence for a deficit in early automatic arousal in response to the pain of the opponent under the influence of high competitive intensity.

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Effects of alexithymia and empathy on the neural processing of social and monetary rewards

Cited by 27 publications

References 79 publications

The Multifaceted Nature of Alexithymia – A Neuroscientific Perspective

The Multifaceted Nature of Alexithymia – A Neuroscientific Perspective

Mapping social reward and punishment processing in the human brain: A voxel-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging findings using the Social Incentive Delay task

Competitive Intensity Modulates the Pain Empathy Response: An Event-Related Potentials Study

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