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

Alexithymia Clinical Trial

— ALEX  

Official title:

Understanding Alexithymia

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Not yet recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT00830752
• Other study ID #: ALEX 2009
• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• First received: January 27, 2009
• Last updated: January 27, 2009
• Start date: February 2009
• Est. completion date: December 2009

Study information

• Verified date: January 2009
• Source: Charite University, Berlin, Germany
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Health authority: Charite-Medical School Berlin, Dean's Office, Germany':'
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial 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

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Enrollment: 70
• Est. completion date: December 2009
• Est. primary completion date: August 2009
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: Both
• Age group: 18 Years to 60 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• scoring high on the TAS-20

Exclusion Criteria:

• personal history of a mental disorder

• currently mentally ill

Study Design

Observational Model: Case-Only, Time Perspective: Prospective

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Alexithymia

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Germany	Charite-Dept. of Psychiatry-Campus Benjamin Franklin	Berlin

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Charite University, Berlin, Germany

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Germany,