Alexithymia, gender, and hemispheric functioning

It has been hypothesized that alexithymia is related to an impairment of th e right hemisphere or a deficiency in interhemispheric transfer. We used th e Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) and the tactile finger localization task of Zeitlin et al. to test these relationships on nonclinical samples of college men and women, and also considered the role of short-term memory . Among 47 men, the TAS-20 facets of difficulty identifying feelings or dif ficulty describing feelings were correlated with poorer performance by the right compared with the left hemisphere in uncrossed trials and poorer inte rhemispheric transfer of information on crossed trials; short-term memory w as not related. Thus, both hemispheric hypotheses were supported for men. H owever, among 58 women, alexithymia was completely unrelated to either inde x of hemispheric functioning; instead, poorer short-term memory (specifical ly digits backwards) strongly predicted poorer interhemispheric transfer. W e conclude that deficiencies in right hemisphere function and interhemisphe ric transfer may contribute to alexithymia in men, but not in women. Copyri ght (C) 2000 by W.B. Saunders Company.