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Alexithymia, a syndrome that involves a marked inability to name feelings, has been linked to psychosomatic illness. This study addressed the question of whether alexithymic tendencies are related to heightened levels of autonomic response to extrinsic cues. Alexithymia was assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and by the emotional content of stories written to five TAT-like printed pictures. Seventy-two college students were exposed to a series of emotion-provoking slides while their heart rates and electrodermal responses were recorded. Results indicated a trend for alexithymic tendencies to be associated with less heart rate increase and fewer electrodermal responses while viewing the slides. Alexithymia was also associated with a small but significant elevation in baseline heart rate. These findings are discussed as part of a pattern of results which calls into question the hypothesis that alexithymia is related to illness because it produces hyperarousal to situational stressors ; it is suggested that future research on the relationship between alexithymia and health status should be broadened to explore health-maintenance behaviors and other possible mechanisms.

We review the empirical literature and critique four possible pathways linking alexithymia and physical illness: (a) alexithymia leads to organic disease through physiological or behavioral mechanisms; (b) alexithymia leads to illness behavior (physical symptoms, disability, excessive health care use) through cognitive or social mechanisms; (c) physical illness leads to alexithymia; and (d) both alexithymia and physical illness result from sociocultural or biological factors. Our review suggests that alexithymia is associated with tonic physiological hyperarousal, certain types of unhealthy behavior, and a biased perception and reporting of somatic sensations and symptoms. Alexithymia also appears to influence health care use, but in a complex fashion. Although trauma may give rise to alexithymia, whether physical illness such as chronic pain does so is not known, and there is little evidence that sociocultural or biological factors lead to both alexithymia and physical illness. We conclude that alexithymia probably influences illness behavior, but there is little support for the hypothesis that alexithymia leads to chronic organic disease, especially when one distinguishes organic disease from illness behavior.

This article presents three studies examining whether alexithymia is associated with less perceived and network social support, whether such relationships are accounted for by reduced social skills associated with alexithymia, and whether limited social support links alexithymia to health problems. The relationships between alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale), social variables, and physical health and depression were examined in both healthy young adults and patients. Alexithymia (especially deficits in identifying and communicating feelings) was related to less perceived support, fewer close relationships, and less social skill: the social skills deficit accounted fully for the association between alexithymia and a smaller social network. Additionally, alexithymia was related to both somatic complaints and depression, but social support generally was not. It is concluded that alexithymia is associated with reduced perceived and network social support, that these associations are likely due to alexithymia-related deficiencies in social skills but that reduced social support does not account for the relationship between alexithymia and health problems.

Alexithymia is associated with substance abuse and may interfere with successful psychotherapy. Alexithymia's relation to smoking, nicotine dependence, and smoking cessation therapy is unknown, and potentially overlaps with negative affect. Three studies addressed the relations between alexithymia, negative affect, and smoking. In Study 1, 67 young adult smokers were more depressed than 370 past or never smokers, but no different on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale total or subscale scores. In Study 2, negative affect--but not alexithymia--was related to greater nicotine dependence among 99 chronic smokers. In Study 3, alexithymia tended to predict increased patient participation in cognitive-behavioral therapy for smoking; low nicotine dependence--but neither alexithymia nor negative affect--predicted abstinence from smoking at treatment end. Alexithymia appears to be independent of negative affect and unrelated to cigarette smoking or nicotine dependence, suggesting that the affect regulation deficits in alexithymia play a negligible role in nicotine addiction.

Weanling rats were placed on a high-fat diet or chow. Beginning at 5 weeks of age, they were tested for acceptability of 4 sucrose solutions of different concentrations once a week until they showed the previously established adult pattern of acceptability. Subjects on the chow diet showed a gradual transition from a juvenile to adult pattern of acceptability, that is, a progressive downward shift in the concentration of solution that is most acceptable. Subjects on the high-fat diets never showed the adult pattern but continued to display a juvenile pattern of acceptability throughout the experiment. The data obtained from the subjects on the high-fat diets are similar to those on taste preferences in obese humans.

Swiss—Webster mice were reared in litters composed of six males, six females, or five females and one male. Maternal and pup behaviors were observed prior to weaning and recorded by checklist using the instantaneous scan method. Some preweaning social behaviors occurred earlier among pups in the mixed litters than in litters of one sex. No differences in maternal behavior were observed. The males were tested for aggressiveness at 60–65 days of age by caging them in groups of four, two each from all-male and single-male litters, for a period of 6 days. Aggressiveness ranks were assigned within each cage on the basis of body scars and behavioral observation. It was found that males reared as the single male in the litter engaged in more intermale aggression than those from all-male litters. Aggressiveness was also highly related to weight loss during the group housing period, the most aggressive animals losing the least weight. The preweaning environment affects later intermale aggression in mice, perhaps by way of intralitter social interactions, olfactory cues, or hormonal levels.

The literature indicates that the effects of developmental undernutrition on the rat nervous system are disproportionally found in the cerebellum, an organ involved in motor coordination and control. In this experiment, rats who had been developmentally undernourished did not show increased variability of forces placed on a bar by the paw in an operant learning paradigm, indicating normal motor control function. However, deficits were obtained when reinforcement was made contingent on bar press force regulation. Experimental rats shifted bar pressing forces to meet criterion more slowly than controls and received fewer reinforcements over training trials. The data are discussed in terms of recent suggestions that the cerebellum is directly involved in motor learning processes.

At weaning (21 days) 60 male C57BL/6J mice were placed into isolation cages while 60 others were grouped in enriched environments. Fifteen days later half of each group was shifted to the opposite housing condition while the other half continued to live in the same environments in which they had been placed at weaning. At the end of the second 15-day interval (51 days) one-third of the mice were killed immediately to obtain resting levels of plasma corticosterone while the remaining mice were placed into a novel environment, They were killed either 15 or 30 min later and their blood assayed for corticosterone; in addition, the number of boluses defecated while in the novel environment was recorded. Finally, whole brain weights, adrenal weights, and body weights were obtained on all animals. The groups did not differ on the corticosterone measure; enrichment during the second 15-day interval significantly increased adrenal weight; and enrichment immediately after weaning increased defecation while enrichment during the second phase of the study decreased defecation. The lack of relationship among these measures raises serious questions concerning the concept of emotionality in the mouse. Finally, animals which did not undergo a shift in housing environments had heavier brains than the two groups which did shift. This finding is not in agreement with data from the rat.

Growth, emotionality, food competition, and aggression were examined in mice nursed in litters of 3 or 9 and reared in isolation until testing. Animals from large litters were lighter at weaning and in adulthood and were more emotional in the open field than subjects from small litters. They did not win more food competition tests than subjects from small litters although their consummatory behavior during food competition tests was greater. Subjects from large litters were more aggressive in initial encounters, but over repeated encounters became more submissive. In a 2nd open-field test, emotionality of large-litter subjects was reduced more than that of subjects from small litters. When later placed in group-living cages, subjects from small litters sustained less long term physical assault than subjects from large litters. High correlations were found between the 4 measures of brief aggression.

Differential effects of maternal nutrition and litter size variation were examined in a 2 x 2 factorial design in which undernourished or lib fed mothers nursed litters of 4 or 12. Litter size accounted for a greater proportion of pup body weight a weaning than did maternal nutrition. When the mother was fed ad lib, birth weight of individual pups and later body weight were correlated regardless of litter size. When the mother was undernourished, these correlations were not found. Enlargement of littersize increased the pup weight coefficient of variability only when the mother was fed ad lib. Size of the litter did not influence the maternal variables under study: open field behavior, adrenal weight, and body weight.

Female rats who had been made obese on a protein-supplemented high fat diet were mated. Impaired estrous cycling prevented conception in nearly half the experimental females. The young who were born to the remaining experimental mothers were lighter in birth weight. Most were cannibalized within the first week postpartum. Observation of mother-young interactions revealed a high level of pup licking. The disruptions in reproductive behaviors are similar to those reported in females whose obesity is a consequence of hypothalamic lesion.

Physiological and behavioral development of rats was affected by prenatal nutrition and postnatal litter size. Prenatal nutrition was manipulated by combining differences in maternal nutrition with variation of prenatal litter size produced by pre-mating isolation of 1 uterine horn. The pups were reared in postnatal litters of either 4 or 12. During the 1st postnatal week, development and free behavior were affected only by the prenatal treatments. During the 2nd postnatal week, both prenatal and postnatal effects were observed. Development and behavior during the 3rd postnatal week reflected only postnatal litter size. Brain weight at weaning was influenced by both the prenatal and postnatal treatment.

The rehabilitative effects of exogenous thyroxine on infant development of undernourished animals were examined. Thyroxine injection accelerated the rate of body growth, age at eye opening, tooth eruption, and several emitted behaviors in undernourished infant animals. The data indirectly support previous findings that undernutrition induces hypothyroidism and that exogenous thyroxine might be an effective rehabilitative agent.

EXPERIMENTAL manipulations of female rats have significantly influenced the open field behaviour of their grandpups. This phenomenon has been called “non-genetic transmission of information”1. Whereas the experimental manipulations of the grandmothers reported in ref. 1 consisted of pre-weaning infantile “handling”, we have investigated whether stress of the grandmother rat before and during pregnancy affected the open field behaviour of the offspring of the foetuses carried during or immediately after the periods of stress.