Atypical automatic processing of interoceptive information in adolescents with alexithymia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Heartbeat-evoked potential an EEG marker for cardiac processing was investigated. • Alexithymia scores relate to the EEG marker in adolescents. • Association given when participants performed an interoceptive task. • Association not given for a resting condition or emotion recognition task. • This might suggest deficits in alexithymia concerning early interoceptive processing. Alexithymia, characterized by impaired emotional identification and expression, exhibits conceptual and neuroanatomical overlap with atypical interoception - the ability to perceive and process bodily signals. This study investigates in adolescents the link between alexithymia and interoception using the heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP), a brain response reflecting cardiac signal processing. Forty-seven healthy subjects (mean age 14.29 years, 53.2% female) underwent HEP recordings across three conditions (an interoceptive task, facial emotion recognition task, and resting condition) and completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Frontocentral right hemisphere HEP activity during the interoceptive task displayed a negative correlation with TAS-20 total score. The HEP measured in the same area showed a non-significant trend for a negative correlation with two TAS-20 subscales. No significant correlation was observed between alexithymia scores and HEP amplitudes during the other conditions. TAS-20 scores had no significant association with the performance in an interoceptive task. Generalizability to adults is limited due to ongoing emotional and interoceptive network maturation in adolescents. HEP is only an indirect marker for interoceptive processes; therefore, no causality can be implied. Alexithymia self-reports could be critical, as individuals with higher levels of alexithymia exhibit more difficulties in discerning their internal emotional states. Power sensitivity analysis revealed a slightly underpowered sample. This study suggests altered neuronal processing of bodily signals during interoception in adolescents with higher alexithymia scores. Our findings are novel, as they are the first to exhibit an interaction in this direction, thus highlighting the relevance of interoceptive processing in alexithymia.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".