Differential impairment in recognition of emotion across different media in people with severe traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that there may be dissociable systems for recognizing emotional expressions from different media including audio and visual channels, and stillversusmoving displays. In this study, 34 adults with severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and 28 adults without brain injuries were assessed for their capacity to recognize emotional expressions from dynamic audiovisual displays, conversational tone alone, moving facial displays, and still photographs. The TBI group were significantly impaired in their interpretation of both audio and audiovisual displays. In addition, eight of the 34 were significantly impaired in their capacity to recognize still facial expressions. In contrast, only one individual was impaired in the recognition of moving visual displays. Information processing speed was not found to play a significant role in producing problems with dynamic emotional expression. Instead the results suggest that visual moving displays may enlist different brain systems to those engaged with still displays, for example, the parietal cortices. Problems with the processing of affective prosody, while present, were not clearly related to other emotion processing problems. While this may attest to the independence of the auditory affective system, it may also reflect problems with the dual demands of listening to conversational meaning and affective tone. (JINS, 2005,11, 392–399.)

Inability to empathize following traumatic brain injury

“…However, the TBI cohort reported significantly higher rates of low empathy for both males and females, suggesting that this important aspect of social cognition is vulnerable to head trauma, irrespective of gender. Therefore, in addition to reported emotion recognition deficits following TBI (McDonald & Flanagan, 2004;McDonald & Saunders, 2005) and high levels of acquired (organic) alexithymia (Wood & Williams, 2007), TBI can also produce the kind of emotional blunting that prevents many individuals from experiencing the emotions of others, a deficit that potentially contributes to a range of interpersonal difficulties and problems of psychosocial adjustment.…”

Emotion perception deficits following traumatic brain injury: A review of the evidence and rationale for intervention

“…Similarly, there are suggestions that individuals with TBI who have emotion perception deficits may differ with respect to modality of deficit, such that some cases may demonstrate difficulties with recognizing facial expressions but not emotional prosody, and others, vice versa (McDonald & Saunders, 2005). These results may reflect heterogeneity with respect to pathology as well as the impact of other cognitive deficits present in this group (Allerdings & Alfano, 2006).…”

“…There is some evidence for an association between executive function and emotion perception in TBI (Bornhofen & McDonald, in press;McDonald et al, 2006;McDonald & Saunders, 2005). Other types of dysfunction, such as slowed information processing and variable attention may compromise an individual's ability to track the continuous flow of data presented in social interactions.…”

Social behavior following traumatic brain injury and its association with emotion recognition, understanding of intentions, and cognitive flexibility

“…Impaired recognition of emotions as expressed in the face, the voice, or body posture has been reported in patients with TBI (Braun et al, 1989;Croker & McDonald, 2005;Green et al, 2004;Hopkins et al, 2002;Jackson & Moffat, 1987;McDonald & Saunders, 2005;Milders et al, 2003;Pettersen, 1991;Spell & Frank, 2000). Jackson and Moffat (1987) already speculated that the impairment in recognizing emotional expressions could play a role in the inadequate social behavior following TBI, without actually investigating that possibility.…”