Search

Introduction: Affective abnormalities resulting from traumatic brain injuries can pose major threats to the long-term outcomes of neurorehabilitation, especially when they have gone unattended in the process of rehabilitation. This study reports a case of a 46-year-old woman who survived a severe traumatic brain injury to the right occipital cortex (BA18/19) at the age of 10. While her cognitive recovery was remarkable, she has been living with a significant affective disturbance: difficulty with feeling others' feelings., Method: Neuropsychological tests and self-reported questionnaires capturing the patient's neuropsychological profile, social cognitive abilities, emotional responses, affective awareness and visual imager were administered to the patient., Results: While cognitive functioning beside attention has recovered well, findings clearly indicate that she is indeed suffering from a high level of alexithymia., Conclusion: It is speculated that the alexithymia observed may relate to the damage to the visual cortex, which is an important neural substrate for visual imagery and/or damage to the bottom-up stimulus-driven attention system in the right hemisphere. This case exemplified a possible organic basis of social affective disturbance, which may be overlooked in the process of neurorehabilitation.

This study explored the relationship of mindfulness trait with the early and late stages of affective processing, by examining the two corresponding ERP components, P2 and LPP, collected from twenty-two male Chinese participants with a wide range of meditation experiences. Multiple regression analyses was performed on the mindfulness scores, as measured by CAMS-R, with the subjective affective ratings and ERP data collected during an emotion processing task. The results showed that increased mindfulness scores predicted increased valence ratings of negative stimuli (less negative), as well as increased P2 amplitudes at the frontocentral location for positive compared to negative stimuli. Based on these findings, a plausible mechanism of mindfulness in reducing negativity bias was discussed. Moreover, our results replicated previous findings on the age-related increase of P2 amplitudes at the frontal sites for positive compared to neutral stimuli. Since the locations at which P2 amplitudes were found as associated with age and mindfulness differed, as did the emotional contents of the stimuli being compared, indicating that the effect of age did not confound our findings on mindfulness and the two factors might operate on early affective processing from distinct sources and mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]