Peer-Reviewed
The effect of spinal cord transaction on emotional awareness, expressivity and memory for emotional material
R.E. O'Carroll
University of Stirling
D.K. Deady
University of Stirling
N.T. North
Salisbury District Hospital
Background
It is widely believed that spinal cord damage impairs emotional experience, presumably due to a loss of afferent feedback from soma to psyche.
Methods
In this study, 24 Spinal-cord injury (SCI) patients (total C6 transection), 20 Orthopaedic injury control patients (OIC; matched for age, sex and education) and 20 healthy individuals were assessed for emotional awareness, expressivity and memory for emotional material. Participants completed the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS; which is designed to assess emotional awareness in self and others) the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ; designed to assess positive emotional expressivity, negative emotional expressivity and strength of emotional expressivity), and viewed a slide presentation depicting emotionally arousing material. Thirty minutes following viewing of the slide presentation participants received free recall and recognition memory tests of the presentation.
Findings
The SCI and OIC groups did not differ on any of the LEAS variables. There were also no differences between 3 study groups on BEQ variables. However, SCI patients reported significantly greater levels of strength of emotional expressivity and mean emotional expressivity after their injury, compared compared with before. Analysis of memory scores for the emotional slide presentation revealed no evidence that spinal-cord injury leads to impairment in memory for emotional events.
Discussion
The mainstream view is that spinal cord injury impairs emotional capacities, the extent of which is greater the higher up the spinal cord the lesion occurs. The findings of this study challenge this widely held view.
