An investigation of emotional deficit and facial emotion recognition in traumatic brain injury: A neuropsychological study

Emotional deficit and impairment in facial expression decoding are amongst the most common limitation consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI). A total of 35 TBI patients and 39 healthy matched controls completed several neuropsychological tests including: the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20); the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS); Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA); the Trail Making Test (TMT); and the Facial Expressions of Emotion Stimuli and Tests (FEEST). TBI patients performed significantly worse than controls according to all of the neuropsychological assessments, with MoCA (t = 6.1, P = 0.005), TMT-A (t = 7.9, P = 0.005), and TMT-B (t = 11.6, P = 0.0001). There were statistically significant differences between groups in TAS and FEEST as determined by t-test and χ2, with results of 25.8, P = 0.0001 and 3.20, P = 0.005 respectively. In terms of conclusions, emotional deficit could affect rehabilitation and recovery. It is recommended to increase awareness among Saudi rehabilitation programs about the potential mediating role of emotional deficit after brain injury, and focus attention on providing the appropriate rehabilitation interventions.