Researchers Explore Link Between Alexithymia And Panic Disorder

Monday, June 2, 2008 - 22:42 in Psychology & Sociology

Investigators of the University of Naples have explored the inability to express emotions (alexithymia) in panic disorder in a paper published in the third 2008 issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. In patients with panic disorder (PD), the difficulty to identify and manage emotional experience might contribute to the enduring vulnerability to panic attacks. Such a difficulty might reflect a dysfunction of fronto-temporo-limbic circuits. The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that drug-free patients with PD, as compared with healthy subjects (HS), show a higher prevalence of alexithymia, greater difficulty in emotional stimuli processing and poorer performance on neuropsychological tests exploring the activity of fronto-temporo-limbic circuits. read more

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