Impaired mu suppression to negative affect in Traumatic Brain Injured Patients.
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1
University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Australia
Background: The disrupted capacity to understand, process and express emotional information found in people with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) has a major impact on their social functioning. Around two thirds of patients with TBI experience deficits in arousal and emotional responsivity. The discovery of the mirror neuron system (MNS) in the human brain has provided a neurobiological substrate for understanding human social cognition directly relevant to the emotional processing deficits observed in TBI. While a large body of research has investigated MNS function in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), there have been no studies investigating MNS functioning in individuals with TBI. However, this group represents an important opportunity to examine MNS function in a population with an acquired social cognition deficit, in contrast to the developmental deficit found in ASD.
Method: 19 adults (15 male, age 44.9, SD = 13.7), who had sustained a TBI, and 19 age, gender and education matched healthy controls participated. Electroencephalography was recorded while participants viewed repeated presentations of happy and angry facial expressions. Event-related power in the lower alpha (8-10 Hz) and upper alpha bands (10-12 Hz) was derived for expression (happy vs. angry), and group (TBI vs. Controls).
Results: Suppression was found in the lower alpha band to the happy but not the angry faces for both groups. For the upper alpha band suppression was found to both facial expressions, and this was larger to angry faces for controls compared to the TBI group (F (1,36) = 9.7, p < 001).
Conclusion: These findings suggest disrupted functional connectivity in neural networks that process negative affect following TBI. Possible treatments to repair functional connectivity will be proposed.
Keywords:
Mirror Neurons,
mu rhythm,
Traumatic Brain Injury,
social cognition,
Emotion Regulation
Conference:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Psychophysiology
Citation:
Rushby
JA,
McDonald
S,
De Blasio
F and
Kornfeld
E
(2015). Impaired mu suppression to negative affect in Traumatic Brain Injured Patients..
Conference Abstract:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00038
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Received:
01 Nov 2015;
Published Online:
30 Nov 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Jacqueline A Rushby, University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Sydney, Australia, j.rushby@unsw.edu.au