Empathy and alexithymia in essential tremor

Social cognition is increasingly recognized as part of the non-motor phenotype of essential tremor (ET). Available ET evidence suggests selective alterations in some socio-cognitive domains, whereas findings on self-reported empathy and alexithymia remain limited and inconsistent.

This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate empathy and alexithymia in patients with ET compared with healthy controls (HC), and to explore their associations with global cognition and with each other.

Forty ET patients and 40 HC underwent the Italian versions of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the short Empathy Quotient (EQ-short), and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20).

ET patients had significantly lower MoCA scores than HC (22.1 ± 4.1 vs. 25.3 ± 3.2, p<0.001), whereas no between-group differences emerged for EQ-short or TAS-20 scores. In ET, MoCA was not significantly associated with empathy or alexithymia measures. In HC, higher MoCA scores were associated with greater emotional reactivity. Exploratory bivariate analyses suggested inverse associations between social skills and alexithymia in ET, but only the adjusted ET models remained significant.

Our findings do not support a group-level deficit in self-reported empathy or alexithymia in ET. Rather, they suggest that socio-emotional functioning may be largely preserved at the group level, while the relationship between social skills and emotional self-description may differ in ET.