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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Neural substrates of affective face recognition in alexithymia: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study
Byeong-Taek Lee1, Hwa-Young Lee, Sae-Ah Park
1Office of Admissions, Seoul National University, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.
Background:
Alexithymia is a condition characterized by deficits in cognitive processing and the regulation of emotions. Several theories have been proposed for the underlying neurobiology, but the etiology of alexithymia remains unclear.
Methods:
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated brain activation measured on the scale of alexithymia in 38 individuals who were presented with neutral, sad, or angry affective facial stimuli.
Results:
We found significant inverse correlations between the degree of alexithymia represented by the Korean version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20K) and the intensity of the neural response to angry facial stimuli over neutral facial stimuli in the right caudate. This result was mainly due to the activations in factor 2 (difficulty describing feelings) in TAS-20K scale.
Conclusions:
The results suggest that functional impairments in the caudate of the fronto-striatal circuitry may play important roles in the pathophysiology of alexithymia.
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