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. 2015 May 27;6:589. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00589

Figure 2.

Figure 2

(A) Comparing IA-related neural activity between non-psychiatric controls (NC) with low (lowDD) and high TAS-DD scores (highDD) on a whole-brain level, alexithymic participants (NC-highDD) show increased activity in the left insula whilst NC-lowDD show increased activity in the supragenual anterior cingulate cortex (sACC; BA 24/32, coordinates in MNI space). A closer look at underlying neural activity during IA (bar diagrams show mean signal change ± SEM)† reveal positive BOLD responses in both groups in the insula with greater activity in NC-highDD (dark purple bars). In the sACC, NC-lowDD (light purple bars) reveal small positive BOLD responses, whilst the alexithymic group shows negative BOLD responses. (B) IA-related neural activity is compared between high alexithymic groups, i.e., non-psychiatric controls scoring high on the TAS-DD scale (NC-highDD) and patients suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD, coordinates in MNI space.). TAS-DD scores show no differences between these groups. On the whole-brain level, NC-highDD show significantly greater neural activity during IA in the insula compared to MDD. IA-related BOLD responses within the left and right insula (bar diagrams show mean signal change ± SEM)† illustrate that NC-highDD show positive BOLD responses (dark purple bars), whereas MDD show small responses (green bars). (C) When considering TAS-DD scores and psychiatric status, the comparison between NC-lowDD and MDD seems the most distinct. On the whole-brain level, NC-lowDD show significantly greater neural activity during IA in the left/right insula and the sACC (coordinates given in MNI space.). Calculating BOLD responses of each region (bar diagrams show mean signal change ± SEM)†, MDD patients show negative BOLD responses particularly in the left insula and sACC (green bars). NC-lowDD reveal positive IA-related activity particularly in the bilateral insula (light purple bars).† Bar diagrams for illustration purposes only. No additional statistical tests were performed on these values in order to avoid circularity.