Organization: Winfried Menninghaus, Malek Bajbouj, Hauke Heekeren, Isabella Heuser, Gisela Klann-Delius, Hedda Lausberg, and Cornelia Müller

November 8-9, 2010

The goal of the BAC 2010 is to bring international alexithymia-researchers together in Berlin for two days to share research experience and ideas. Furthermore we hope to encourage further work using innovative approaches and to underscore the need for increased clinical research in alexithymia.

The conference is organized into several workshops dedicated to specific topics in which the invited researchers present their current projects.

Moreover, the "Berlin Alexithymia Inventory" research group of the Excellence Cluster "Languages of Emotion" at Freie Universität Berlin presents the results of several years of interdisciplinary research.

Program

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Monday November 8, 2010

Mentalizing in alexithymia

Claudia Subic-Wrana (Johannes - Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany) - Relations between emotional awareness and mentalizing

Yoshiya Moriguchi (National Institute of Mental Health Tokyo, Japan) - Neuroimaging study of mentalizing in alexithymia

Richard Lane (University of Arizona, USA) - Emotional awareness covaries with theory of mind ability: implicationsfor the conceptualization and measurement of alexithymia

Assessing alexithymia

Bob Bermond (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) - Alexithymia: one or two dimensions?

James Parker (Trent University, Canada) - Can alexithymia be assessed in adolescents?

Mark Haviland (Loma Linda University School of Medicine, USA) - Alexithymia appraisals: improving accuracy with observer measures

Neuroimaging of emotional processes in alexithymia

Sylvie Berthoz (Université Paris Descartes, France) - Neural correlates of alexithymia: a multi dimensional approach

Harald Kugel (Universitätsklinikum Münster, Germany) - Alexithymic features and automatic brain reactivity to masked facial emotion studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging

Olga Pollatos (Universität Potsdam, Germany) - Alexithymia hampers suppressing of negative emotions and affects underlying brain activity

Tuesday November 9, 2010

Berlin Alexithymia Research Group - Cluster of Excellence Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin

Isabella Heuser, Elif Alkan, Sabine Aust (Charité/ FU Berlin, Germany) - Neuro psychological and neurobiological findings in alexithymia

Gisela Klann-Delius, Cornelia Müller, Christiane Wotschack, Mary Copple (FU Berlin/ Europa-Universität Frankfurt-Oder) - Language and gesture of alexithymia

Hedda Lausberg (Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, Germany) - Awareness of emotions – Movement behavior as an indicator of implicit emotional processing in subjects with and without alexithymia

Hereditary determinants and clinical implications of alexithymia

Angelo Picardi (Italian National Institute of Health Rome, Italy) - Genetic influences on alexithymia and their relationship to depressive symptoms

Hans-Jörgen Grabe (Universität Greifswald, Germany) - Familial and genetic determinants of alexithymia

André Aleman (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) - Feelings without words: the cognitive and neural basis of alexithymia and relevance for schizophrenia

Neural correlates of empathy and pain processing in alexithymia

Harald Gündel (Universitätsklinikum Ulm, Germany) - Neural correlates of empathy and pain in patients with pain-predominant multisomatoform disorder

Hasse Karlsson (University of Helsinki, Finland) - The impact of alexithymia on the neural processing of experimental pain – a fMRI study

Tania Singer (University of Zurich, Switzerland) - Interoception and empathy in healthy adults and populations with autism and alexithymia