Francine Wehmer

How are alexithymia and physical illness linked? A review and critique of pathways

We review the empirical literature and critique four possible pathways linking alexithymia and physical illness; (a) alexithymia leads to organic disease through physiological or behavioral mechanisms: (b) alexithymia leads to illness behavior (physical symptoms, disability, excessive health care use) through cognitive or social mechanisms: (c) physical illness leads to alexithymia; and (d) both alexithymia and physical illness result from sociocultural or biological factors. Our review suggests that alexithymia is associated with tonic physiological hyperarousal, certain types of unhealthy behavior, and a biased perception and reporting of somatic sensations and symptoms. Alexithymia also appears to influence health care use, but in a complex fashion. Although trauma may give rise to alexithymia, whether physical illness such as chronic pain does so is not known, and there is little evidence that sociocultural or biological factors lead to both alexithymia and physical illness. We conclude that alexithymia probably influences illness behavior, but there is little support for the hypothesis that alexithymia leads to chronic organic disease, especially when one distinguishes organic disease from illness behavior.

Alexithymia, social support and health problems

This article presents three studies examining whether alexithymia is associated with less perceived and network social support, whether such relationships are accounted for by reduced social skills associated with alexithymia, and whether limited social support links alexithymia to health problems. The relationships between alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale), social variables, and physical health and depression were examined in both healthy young adults and patients. Alexithymia (especially deficits in identifying and communicating feelings) was related to less perceived support, fewer close relationships, and less social skill: the social skills deficit accounted fully for the association between alexithymia and a smaller social network. Additionally, alexithymia was related to both somatic complaints and depression, but social support generally was not. It is concluded that alexithymia is associated with reduced perceived and network social support, that these associations are likely due to alexithymia-related deficiencies in social skills but that reduced social support does not account for the relationship between alexithymia and health problems.

Alexithymia and Physiological Reactivity to Emotion-Provoking Visual Scenes

Alexithymia, a syndrome that involves a marked inability to name feelings, has been linked to psychosomatic illness. This study addressed the question of whether alexithymic tendencies are related to heightened levels of autonomic response to extrinsic cues. Alexithymia was assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and by the emotional content of stories written to five TAT-like printed pictures. Seventy-two college students were exposed to a series of emotion-provoking slides while their heart rates and electrodermal responses were recorded. Results indicated a trend for alexithymic tendencies to be associated with less heart rate increase and fewer electrodermal responses while viewing the slides. Alexithymia was also associated with a small but significant elevation in baseline heart, rate. These findings are discussed as part of a pattern of results which calls into question the hypothesis that alexithymia is related to illness because it produces hyperarousal to situational stressors; it is suggested that future research on the relationship between alexithymia and health status should be broadened to explore health-maintenance behaviors and other possible mechanisms.

Alexithymia and negative affect: Relationship to cigarette smoking, nicotine dependence, and smoking cessation

Alexithymia is associated with substance abuse and may interfere with successful psychotherapy. Alexithymias relation to smoking, nicotine dependence, and smoking cessation therapy is unknown, and potentially overlaps with negative affect. Three studies addressed the relations between alexithymia, negative affect, and smoking. In Study 1, 67 young adult smokers were more depressed than 370 past or never smokers, but no different on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale total or subscale scores. In Study 2, negative affect--but not alexithymia--was related to greater nicotine dependence among 99 chronic smokers. In Study 3, alexithymia tended to predict increased patient participation in cognitive-behavioral therapy for smoking; low nicotine dependence--but neither alexithymia nor negative affect--predicted abstinence from smoking at treatment end. Alexithymia appears to be independent of negative affect and unrelated to cigarette smoking or nicotine dependence, suggesting that the affect regulation deficits in alexithymia play a negligible role in nicotine addiction.

Gender composition of the litter affects behavior of male mice.

Swiss—Webster mice were reared in litters composed of six males, six females, or five females and one male. Maternal and pup behaviors were observed prior to weaning and recorded by checklist using the instantaneous scan method. Some preweaning social behaviors occurred earlier among pups in the mixed litters than in litters of one sex. No differences in maternal behavior were observed. The males were tested for aggressiveness at 60–65 days of age by caging them in groups of four, two each from all-male and single-male litters, for a period of 6 days. Aggressiveness ranks were assigned within each cage on the basis of body scars and behavioral observation. It was found that males reared as the single male in the litter engaged in more intermale aggression than those from all-male litters. Aggressiveness was also highly related to weight loss during the group housing period, the most aggressive animals losing the least weight. The preweaning environment affects later intermale aggression in mice, perhaps by way of intralitter social interactions, olfactory cues, or hormonal levels.

The effects of high fat diet on reproduction in female rats.

Female rats who had been made obese on a protein-supplemented high fat diet were mated. Impaired estrous cycling prevented conception in nearly half the experimental females. The young who were born to the remaining experimental mothers were lighter in birth weight. Most were cannibalized within the first week postpartum. Observation of mother-young interactions revealed a high level of pup licking. The disruptions in reproductive behaviors are similar to those reported in females whose obesity is a consequence of hypothalamic lesion.

Conditioning of fine motor control in neonatally undernourished rats.

Abstract The literature indicates that the effects of developmental undernutrition on the rat nervous system are disproportionally found in the cerebellum, an organ involved in motor coordination and control. In this experiment, rats who had been developmentally undernourished did not show increased variability of forces placed on a bar by the paw in an operant learning paradigm, indicating normal motor control function. However, deficits were obtained when reinforcement was made contingent on bar press force regulation. Experimental rats shifted bar pressing forces to meet criterion more slowly than controls and received fewer reinforcements over training trials. The data are discussed in terms of recent suggestions that the cerebellum is directly involved in motor learning processes.

Environmental Inheritance: The “Grandmother Effect”

THE aim of this paper is to present the findings of research on the behavioral effects of preweaning environmental stimulation of infrahumans, particularly the laboratory rat. We realize that in the minds of many, behavior of this ubiquitous experimental animal has, at best, only tenuous relationships to a field such as psychosocial gerontology. However, often the unstated aim of all laboratory research, even with infrahumans, is the facilitation of speculations about human adjustment. Work with rats on problems such as the relationship between population density and decay of social structure (Calhoun, 1962), or the relationship between environmental isolation and brain weight, structure and physiology (Rosenzweig, et al., 1968) has stimulated and encouraged thinkers in such farranging fields as sociology, human ecology, education, and aerospace research. As will be seen, the area of experimental research we are describing may contribute to speculations about the variables associated with an individual’s response to the aging process, e.g., how he responds to disease, and the effects of recovery on later “bouts” with stress. We will attempt to show that the resources an individual brings to a stress situation are potentially derived from three sources: (1) the limiting factor of genetic inheritance; (2) his previous life experiences; (3) the effects on his physiology of stressors encountered by his mother and grandmother before his birth. This paper shall emphasize the influence of environment and physiology, and shall not discuss in detail the separate area or genetics. First, we will describe the effect of infantile experience on adult behavior and physiology. Second, we will describe the effects of stress during or before pregnancy on the offspring of that pregnancy. Finally, we will show that both infantile stimulation and pregnancy stress affect the behavior of subsequent generations of offspring. This non-genetic transmission of acquired experiences to subsequent generations may have important implications for consideration of the aspects of environment which influence life, dying and death. This research comes from an area of study called developmental psychobiology, an interdisciplinary sub-specialty within psychology and biology. Its aim is the study of the biological and psychological variables during development which affect the organism’s behavior and biology at later ages. These variables have included social and environmental enrichment or deprivation, and extrinsic stimulation such as electric shock or infant handling. The changes produced by