Self Awareness After Brain Injury: Relation with Emotion Recognition and Effects of Treatment
Self awareness is often impaired after acquired brain injury (ABI) and this hampers rehabilitation, in general: unrealistic reports by patients about their functioning and poor motivation and compliance with treatment. We evaluated a self awareness treatment that was part of a treatment protocol on executive dysfunction (Spikman, Boelen, Lamberts, Brouwer, Fasotti, 2010) A total of 63 patients were included, aged 17 70, suffering non progressive ABI, and minimum time post onset of 3 months. Self awareness was measured by comparing the patient's Dysexecutive Questionnaire (Wilson, Alderman, Burgess, Emslie, Evans, 1996) score with that of an independent other. As emotion recognition is associated with self awareness and influences the effect of rehabilitation treatment, we assessed this function using the Facial Expressions of Emotion Stimuli and Tests (Young, Perrett, Calder, Sprengelmeyer, Ekman, 2002) Results showed that patients in the experimental treatment group (n 29) had better self awareness after training than control patients (n 34) Moreover, our results confirmed that the level of self awareness before treatment was related to emotion recognition. Hence, self awareness can improve after neuropsychological treatment fostering self monitoring. Since neuropsychological treatment involves social learning, impairments in social cognition should be taken into account before starting and during treatment.
Brain Impairment