A common effect of injury to certain areas of the brain is a reduced ability to recognise other people's emotions and to respond appropriately. This can lead to difficulties interacting socially, which can add to the isolation many brain injury survivors experience. Traditionally, it has been very difficult to address this problem in rehabilitation. However, a study published in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation has attempted to do so, with some success.
The study was carried out with 19 participants from New York and Southern Ontario. Ten of the participants were trained in recognising emotions from facial expressions, a technique known as Facial Affect Recognition (FAR). The other nine participants were taught to process emotions from written stories, or Stories of Emotional Inference (SEI). Both groups completed six to nine sessions of training, which also incorporated the participants' own emotional responses to the experience.
When the training was completed, both groups showed significant improvement. The FAR participants demonstrated much improved ability to recognise others' emotions from their facial expressions and the context in which they occurred. Also, the SEI group members exhibited an increased capacity to infer how they and others would feel in a given situation.
The researchers conclude that training can potentially improve emotion perception in brain injury survivors. Although further research is needed, the techniques are clinically practical and show great promise.
Reference
Radice-Neumann, Dawn PhD; Zupan, Barbra PhD; Tomita, Machiko PhD; Willer, Barry PhD. (2009) Training Emotional Processing in Persons With Brain Injury. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation; 24 (5): 313-323.
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