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Query: UMLS:C0004352 (autism)
 32,579 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Difficulties in the cognitive processing of emotions--including difficulties identifying and describing feelings--are assumed to be an integral part of autism. We studied such difficulties via self-report in 27 high-functioning adults with autistic spectrum disorders, their biological relatives (n = 49), and normal adult controls (n = 35), using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory. The individuals with autism spectrum disorders were significantly more impaired in their emotion processing and were more depressed than those in the control and relative groups.
J Autism Dev Disord 2004 Apr
PMID:Brief report: cognitive processing of own emotions in individuals with autistic spectrum disorder and in their relatives. 1516 41

Given the recent findings regarding the association between alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the accumulating evidence for the presence of the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) in relatives of individuals with ASD, we further explored the construct of alexithymia in parents of children with ASD as a potential part of the BAP. We hypothesized that (a) parents of children with ASD will demonstrate higher impairment in their emotion processing when compared to controls, and (b) high impairment in emotion processing in parents will be associated with severity of symptoms in children with ASD. Psychometric and diagnostic data were collected on 188 children with a diagnosis of ASD. The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) was completed by 439 parents of children with ASD and a control group of 45 parents of children with Prader Willi syndrome (PW). Results show that ASD parents score higher than controls on the TAS-20 total score. Within the ASD group, children of fathers with high alexithymia score higher on repetitive behaviour symptoms compared to children of fathers with low alexithymia. The alexithymia trait appears to be one of the many building blocks that make up the BAP.
J Autism Dev Disord 2008 Nov
PMID:Alexithymia in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. 1847 59

Autism is associated with an inability to identify and distinguish one's own feelings. We assessed this inability using alexithymia and empathy questionnaires, and used fMRI to investigate brain activity while introspecting on emotion. Individuals with high functioning autism/Asperger syndrome (HFA/AS) were compared with matched controls. Participants rated stimuli from the International Affective Picture System twice, once according to the degree of un/pleasantness that the pictures induced, and once according to their color balance. The groups differed significantly on both alexithymia and empathy questionnaires. Alexithymia and lack of empathy were correlated, indicating a link between understanding one's own and others' emotions. For both groups a strong relationship between questionnaire scores and brain activity was found in the anterior insula (AI), when participants were required to assess their feelings to unpleasant pictures. Regardless of self-reported degree of emotional awareness, individuals with HFA/AS differed from controls when required to introspect on their feelings by showing reduced activation in self-reflection/mentalizing regions. Thus, we conclude that difficulties in emotional awareness are related to hypoactivity in AI in both individuals with HFA/AS and controls, and that the particular difficulties in emotional awareness in individuals with HFA/AS are not related to their impairments in self-reflection/mentalizing.
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PMID:Levels of emotional awareness and autism: an fMRI study. 1863 52

Difficulties in social cognition are well recognized in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (henceforth 'autism'). Here we focus on one crucial aspect of social cognition: the ability to empathize with the feelings of another. In contrast to theory of mind, a capacity that has often been observed to be impaired in individuals with autism, much less is known about the capacity of individuals with autism for affect sharing. Based on previous data suggesting that empathy deficits in autism are a function of interoceptive deficits related to alexithymia, we aimed to investigate empathic brain responses in autistic and control participants with high and low degrees of alexithymia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured empathic brain responses with an 'empathy for pain' paradigm assessing empathic brain responses in a real-life social setting that does not rely on attention to, or recognition of, facial affect cues. Confirming previous findings, empathic brain responses to the suffering of others were associated with increased activation in left anterior insula and the strength of this signal was predictive of the degree of alexithymia in both autistic and control groups but did not vary as a function of group. Importantly, there was no difference in the degree of empathy between autistic and control groups after accounting for alexithymia. These findings suggest that empathy deficits observed in autism may be due to the large comorbidity between alexithymic traits and autism, rather than representing a necessary feature of the social impairments in autism.
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PMID:Empathic brain responses in insula are modulated by levels of alexithymia but not autism. 2037 9

Eye-tracking studies have demonstrated mixed support for reduced eye fixation when looking at social scenes in individuals with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). We present evidence that these mixed findings are due to a separate condition-alexithymia-that is frequently comorbid with ASC. We find that in adults with ASC, autism symptom severity correlated negatively with attention to faces when watching video clips. However, only the degree of alexithymia, and not autism symptom severity, predicted eye fixation. As well as potentially resolving the contradictory evidence in this area, these findings suggest that individuals with ASC and alexithymia may form a sub-group of individuals with ASC, with emotional impairments in addition to the social impairments characteristic of ASC.
J Autism Dev Disord 2011 Nov
PMID:The role of alexithymia in reduced eye-fixation in Autism Spectrum Conditions. 2129 31

It is generally thought that individuals with Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism (AS/HFA) have deficits in theory of mind. These deficits have been previously linked to problems with social cognition. However, we reasoned that AS/HFA individuals' Theory of Mind deficits also might lead to problems with emotion regulation. To assess emotional functioning in AS/HFA, 27 AS/HFA adults (16 women) and 27 age-, gender-, and education-matched typically developing (TD) participants completed a battery of measures of emotion experience, labeling, and regulation. With respect to emotion experience, individuals with AS/HFA reported higher levels of negative emotions, but similar levels of positive emotions, compared with TD individuals. With respect to emotion labeling, individuals with AS/HFA had greater difficulties identifying and describing their emotions, with approximately two-thirds exceeding the cutoff for alexithymia. With respect to emotion regulation, individuals with AS/HFA used reappraisal less frequently than TD individuals and reported lower levels of reappraisal self-efficacy. Although AS/HFA individuals used suppression more frequently than TD individuals, no difference in suppression self-efficacy was found. It is important to note that these differences in emotion regulation were evident even when controlling for emotion experience and labeling. Implications of these deficits are discussed, and future research directions are proposed.
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PMID:Emotion regulation in Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism. 2264 42

It has been suggested that individuals with autism will be less responsive to the emotional content of music than typical individuals. With the aim of testing this hypothesis, a group of high-functioning adults on the autism spectrum was compared with a group of matched controls on two measures of emotional responsiveness to music, comprising physiological and verbal measures. Impairment in participants ability to verbalize their emotions (type-II alexithymia) was also assessed. The groups did not differ significantly on physiological responsiveness, but the autism group was significantly lower on the verbal measure. However, inclusion of the alexithymia score as a mediator variable nullified this group difference, suggesting that the difference was due not to absence of underlying emotional responsiveness to music in autism, but to a reduced ability to articulate it.
J Autism Dev Disord 2013 Feb
PMID:The effects of autism and alexithymia on physiological and verbal responsiveness to music. 2275 45

Despite considerable research into whether face perception is impaired in autistic individuals, clear answers have proved elusive. In the present study, we sought to determine whether co-occurring alexithymia (characterized by difficulties interpreting emotional states) may be responsible for face-perception deficits previously attributed to autism. Two experiments were conducted using psychophysical procedures to determine the relative contributions of alexithymia and autism to identity and expression recognition. Experiment 1 showed that alexithymia correlates strongly with the precision of expression attributions, whereas autism severity was unrelated to expression-recognition ability. Experiment 2 confirmed that alexithymia is not associated with impaired ability to detect expression variation; instead, results suggested that alexithymia is associated with difficulties interpreting intact sensory descriptions. Neither alexithymia nor autism was associated with biased or imprecise identity attributions. These findings accord with the hypothesis that the emotional symptoms of autism are in fact due to co-occurring alexithymia and that existing diagnostic criteria may need to be revised.
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PMID:Alexithymia, not autism, predicts poor recognition of emotional facial expressions. 2352 89

There is an increasing interest in the socio-affective atypicalities observed in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aim of this study was to further explore emotional responsiveness in adults with ASD using well-validated self-reports of alexithymia and to determine whether anhedonic features are part of a broader autism phenotype (BAP). Participants comprised 38 adults with ASD, 87 parents of ASD individuals and 47 typical controls. All participants completed the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire, as well as the Chapman Physical and Social Anhedonia Scales. The ASD group differed from controls and parents on most measures, with the exception of physical and social anhedonia, relative to parents. Parents differed from controls on social anhedonia, and a higher proportion of parents were classed as alexithymic, relative to controls. Cluster analysis revealed that some parents share more similarities with ASD participants than with controls. The results suggest that socio-affective impairments characteristic of ASD are part of the BAP.
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PMID:Investigating emotional impairments in adults with autism spectrum disorders and the broader autism phenotype. 2374 33

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by abnormal social cognition. A core feature of ASC is disrupted Theory of Mind (ToM), our ability to take the mental perspective of others. ASC is also associated with alexithymia, a trait characterized by altered emotional interoception and empathy. Here, we applied structural MRI covariance analysis to assess whether ASC and alexithymia differentially affect structural brain networks associated with sociocognitive and socioaffective functions. Based on previous functional MRI findings, we expected disrupted ToM networks (centered on dorsomedial prefontal cortex [dmPFC], and temporo-parietal junction [TPJ]) in ASC, while alexithymia would affect networks centered on fronto-insular cortex (FI), regions associated with interoception of emotion and empathy. Relative to controls, ASC indeed showed reduced covariance in networks centered on dmPFC and TPJ, but not within FI networks. Irrespective of ASC, covariance was negatively modulated by alexithymia in networks extending from FI to posterior regions. Network findings were complemented by self-reports, indicating decreased perspective taking but normal empathic concern in ASC. Our results show divergent effects of ASC and alexithymia on inter-regional structural networks, suggesting that networks mediating socioaffective processes may be separable from networks mediating sociocognitive processing.
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PMID:Selective disruption of sociocognitive structural brain networks in autism and alexithymia. 2386 87


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