| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,630,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥330,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥1,430,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥330,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Our researches have focused on a personal trait related to the emotional dysregulation in psychosomatic disorders. It is called 'alexithymia' (Sifneos 1972) characterized by difficulty in identifying and describing feeling of the self. Alexithymia is prevalent among psychosomatic as well as psychiatric diseases, which is associated with development and maintenance of stress-related disorders. Early on, I and my colleagues validated the construct of alexithymia using the newly developed Japanese version of the self-administrated 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale(TAS-20) with large Japanese samples. The findings indicate the developmental trajectory of alexithymia. Further, we have investigated, using fMRI, the neuronal basis of empathy to pain in alexithymia. Individuals high in alexithymia(n=16) and low in alexithymia(N=14) were selected from a pool of 310 college students using a combination of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Structured Interview version of the Beth Isr
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ael Questionnaire(SIBIQ). The two groups were compared on psychological measures, including ratings of mentalizing and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index(IRI). Regional brain activation was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) during observation of pictures depicting human hands and feet in painful situations and subsequent pain-rating. The results showed the alexithymia group showed attenuation of cerebral activation within dorsolateral prefrontal cortex(DLPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex(dACC), dorsal pons and cerebellum in response to painful pictures, (regions within the 'pain matrix'). Furthermore, alexithymic participants scored lower on the pain ratings and on the scores related to mature empathy to pain. The result indicates that alexithymia is related with more cognitive/executive function in pain perception. Further, to reveal the neural basis of modulation of pain stress by anticipation, we validated hemodynamic change due to priming effect of anticipation of electrical pain on pain matrix using functional MRI. In result, pain matrix was more associated with subjective pain perception, and pain-related hemodynamic change was enhanced by anticipation, involving a part of rather emotional pain network like basal ganglia(globus pallidus), amygdale, and insula cortices. The results suggest the components of subjective modulation of pain perception. Less
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