The relationship between body image and emotional and cognitive impairment after brain damage: A preliminary study

Introduction The image of one's own body derives from experimentation of one's own body pattern. The emotional experience can lead to a real or distorted self‐representation. After brain damage, a disorder of body image is frequent. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of body image following acquired brain injury (ABI). Methods Forty‐six hospitalized patients were enrolled and subdivided into two groups depending on the etiology of the damage: traumatic or vascular. For each group, we considered their cognitive level and mood. Patients underwent a broad battery of tests to investigate different domains: Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA); Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI‐II); Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (HAM‐A); Clinical Insight Rating Scale (CIRS); Body Image Scale (BIS); Human Figure Drawing (HFD). The latter was used to assess the implicit body image of each patient. Results Both groups showed a significant relationship between BDI‐II and BIS. A positive correlation was found between BIS and HAM‐A, but only in the traumatic group. We showed a positive correlation between MoCA and HFD. In addition, we observed some subitems of MoCA as predictive variables in HFD, which differ in the two groups. In a traumatic group, the visuospatial domain is predictive in HFD, as well as age of patients’ and education. In the vascular groups, orientation, naming, abstraction, and language domains are instead predictive. Conclusions The results confirm the crucial role of the cognitive level and mood on self‐perception.
Body image is a person's perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. After brain damage, the person is subjected to several physical changes with heavy consequences on both physical and emotional domains. It can lead to a dysfunction of the body image and to the risk to compromise cognitive recovery. Notably, this study confirms the relationship between body image and cognitive deficits in ABI patients, especially noticeable in vascular patients.