Alexithymia and the Split Brain

Abstract

8 cerebral commissurotomy patients and 8 precision-matched normal control subjects were shown a 3-minute videotaped film symbolically depicting the deaths of a baby and of a boy. After each of 4 showings, all subjects were questioned about the symbolic and emotional contents of the film. Content analyses of the subjects’ spoken and written responses were carried out on the lexical level. The commissurotomized patients, in comparison to their normal controls, used a lower percentage of affect-laden words, had a higher percentage of incomplete sentences, used a higher percentage of auxiliary verbs, and used a lower percentage of adjectives. Commissurotomy patients were significantly closer to the alexithymic pole of a factor derived from these 4 variables.