Alexithymia and Executive Function in Younger and Older Adults

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Gerontology

Background:

• Alexithymia, characterized by difficulty identifying and describing feelings, is linked to adverse health outcomes.
• Executive dysfunction is increasingly recognized in younger adults with alexithymia.
• Research on alexithymia and executive function in older adults is limited, despite their potential increased risk.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between alexithymia and executive function (EF) in healthy younger and older adults.
• To determine if alexithymia predicts poorer EF across different age groups.

Main Methods:

• Participants included younger adults (n=65, 18-30 years) and older adults (OA, n=44, 61-92 years).
• Measures included the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, three EF tasks (Verbal Fluency, Design Fluency, Trail Making), memory, verbal IQ, and depressive symptoms.
• Verbal EF, visuospatial EF, and global EF composites were calculated.

Main Results:

• Older adults with higher alexithymia scores demonstrated poorer verbal EF (p = .02).
• Difficulty describing feelings was also associated with poorer verbal EF in older adults (p = .005).
• No significant associations between alexithymia and EF were found in younger adults.

Conclusions:

• The findings support previous research linking alexithymia and EF.
• The association between alexithymia and verbal EF in older adults may involve shared prefrontal brain circuits crucial for emotion regulation.
• These results offer insights into the origins of emotion self-awareness deficits in older adults.