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Table 1 Future tasks for neuroimaging studies of alexithymia

From: Neuroimaging studies of alexithymia: physical, affective, and social perspectives

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Problems of the definition of alexithymia

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What is alexithymia and what is not alexithymia? Is emotional numbing in PTSD included in alexithymia? How about ‘depersonalization’ or ‘repressive coping style’? etc.

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Is it acceptable that alexithymia includes negative affective components like depression, anxiety, neuroticism, high distress etc.?

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Clinical aspects of alexithymia

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Alexithymia originates from the characteristics of psychosomatic patients, but normal samples were mainly selected for past neuroimaging studies of alexithymia. How do we interpret the clinical meaning of the results for alexithymia in contrast to healthy samples?

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What are the common components and differences between healthy individuals with high TAS-20 scores and patients with somatic symptoms?