Left hemispheric preference and alexithymia: A neuropsychological investigation

Starting from the hypothesis that alexithymics show a hyperactive left hemisphere, this study investigated the neural processing of visual information in two alexithymic groups and one nonalexithymic group. The subjects performed a lateralised visual-matching task, through which the proportions of ipsilateral and contralateral processing of three types of stimuli were assessed. In line with the hypothesis it was demonstrated that, in contradistinction to nonalexithymics, the two groups of alexithymics showed a left hemispheric preference in their neural processing of emotion words.