Research Proposal: Investigating emotional expression detection in alexithymia

述情障碍与标记、识别和表达情绪的障碍有关。已经发现它可以解释在临床样本中观察到的情绪识别缺陷[2,3]，并且可能是精神障碍疾病严重程度的风险标志。尽管理解述情障碍很重要，但目前尚不清楚述情障碍影响的处理阶段。在典型的情绪表达识别个体中，快速的情绪检测可能在没有意识的情况下发生[4,5]。到目前为止，研究已经观察到述情障碍患者在识别和分类情绪表达方面存在缺陷，但对于这些缺陷是否由于对情绪面孔的不同注意或优先排序机制而发生知之甚少。有证据表明述情障碍患者早期情绪加工异常；隐藏情绪表达的杏仁核激活与特质述情障碍[7]相关。如果述情障碍患者的情绪检测机制受损，这可能会对随后的情绪面部处理阶段产生普遍的不利影响。本项目将探讨特质述情障碍高、低个体的情绪表达检测。

Alexithymia is associated with impairments in labelling, recognising, and expressing emotions [1]. It has been found to explain emotion recognition deficits observed in clinical samples [2, 3], and may be a risk-marker for illness severity in mental disorders. Despite the importance of understanding alexithymia, it remains unclear which stages of processing alexithymia affects. In individuals with typical emotion expression recognition, rapid emotion detection may occur without conscious awareness [4, 5]. Thus far, research has observed deficits in those high in alexithymia at identifying and categorising emotional expressions [6], but little is known about whether these deficits occur due to differential attentional or prioritisation mechanisms for emotional faces. There is some evidence to suggest abnormal early emotion processing in alexithymia; amygdala activation in response to masked emotional expressions is correlated with trait alexithymia [7]. It is possible that if emotion detection mechanisms are impaired in alexithymia, this has a pervasive detrimental effect on subsequent stages of emotional face processing. This project will investigate emotional expression detection in individuals high and low in trait alexithymia.