Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology
-
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol · Jan 2016
Development of an observational measure of social disinhibition after traumatic brain injury.
This study aimed to validate a new observational measure of socially disinhibited behavior for use in a population of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). ⋯ This study demonstrates good interrater reliability and construct validity of the observational measure. The results evidence the usefulness of this measure and the NPI-D for detecting social disinhibition after TBI.
-
Unilateral brain damage can heterogeneously alter spatial processing. Very often brain-lesioned patients fail to report (neglect) items appearing within the contralesional space. Much less often patients mislocalize items' spatial position. We investigated whether a top-down attentional load manipulation (dual-tasking), known to result in contralesional omissions even in apparently unimpaired cases, might also induce spatial mislocalizations. ⋯ When the neural circuitry subtending spatial processing is damaged, an increase in task load can lead to either a disregard or a bias in the processing of contralesional hemispace. The spatial bias subtending mislocalizations seems to index a more severe deficit than neglect, as if contralesional space would be completely erased rather than merely ignored.