Article ; Online: Alexithymia in Alzheimer’s Disease
Journal of Clinical Medicine, Vol 10, Iss 44, p
2021 Volume 44
Abstract: Alexithymia is widely recognized as the inability to identify and express emotions. It is a construct which consists of four cognitive traits such as difficulty in identifying feelings, describing feelings to others, externally oriented thinking, and ... ...
| Abstract | Alexithymia is widely recognized as the inability to identify and express emotions. It is a construct which consists of four cognitive traits such as difficulty in identifying feelings, describing feelings to others, externally oriented thinking, and limited imaginative capacity. Several studies have linked alexithymia to cognitive functioning, observing greater alexithymia scores associated with poorer cognitive abilities. Despite Alzheimer’s disease (AD) being a neurodegenerative pathology characterized by cognitive troubles from the early stages, associated to behavioral and emotional disturbances, very few investigations have studied the alexithymia in AD. These studies have shown that alexithymia scores—assessed with Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS)—were greater in AD patients than healthy participants. The objective of the study was to investigate if the alexithymia was present in patients with mild AD. We hypothesized that the AD group would show more alexithymia features than the control group. We evaluated 54 subjects, including 27 patients diagnosed with mild AD and 27 normal healthy controls, using the Shalling Sifneos Psychosomatic Scale (SSPS-R) and a neuropsychological test battery. Using non-parametric statistical analyses—Wilcoxon and Mann–Whitney U tests—we observed that the SSPS-R scores were similar in the AD and control groups. All participants showed SSPS-R scores below to 10 points, which means no-alexithymia. We did not find significant correlations between SSPS-R scores and cognitive variables in both groups ( p > 0.22), but we observed a negative association between name abilities and alexithymia, but it does not reach to significance ( p = 0.07). However, a significant correlation between SSPS-R score and mood state, assessed using Zerssen Rating Scale, was found in both groups ( p = 0.01). Because we did not find a significant difference in the alexithymia assessment between both subject groups, pot hoc analyses were computed for each item of the SSPS-R. We made comparisons of ... |
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| Keywords | emotion ; neurodegenerative diseases ; Alzheimer ; dementia ; language ; depression ; Medicine ; R |
| Subject code | 150 |
| Language | English |
| Publishing date | 2021-12-01T00:00:00Z |
| Publisher | MDPI AG |
| Document type | Article ; Online |
| Database | BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (life sciences selection) |
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