Hyposmia, Not emotion perception, Is associated with psychosocial outcome after severe traumatic brain injury

Objective: The current study aimed to determine whether 2 variables associated with orbitofrontaldamage, hyposmia and emotion perception deficits, are associated with socially disinhibited behavior andpsychosocial outcome after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Methods: The Brief Smell Identification Test(BSIT), an emotion labeling task, an emotion intensity rating task, and an observational measure of socialdisinhibition were completed by 23 individuals with severe TBI. The disinhibition domain of theNeuropsychiatric Inventory and the interpersonal relationships subscale of the Sydney PsychosocialReintegration Scale (SPRS-IR) were completed by a close other. Fifteen control participants providednorms against which to assess performance on the emotion intensity rating task. Results: BSIT scorespredicted informant-reported change in interpersonal relationships on the SPRS-IR. Hyposmia, though,was not associated with informant-reported or observed social disinhibition. An impairment in accuracyscores on both emotion perceptions tasks was found for participants with TBI, yet intensity ratings didnot differ between groups. This suggests that people with TBI are not actually impaired at detectingintensity of emotion but are less likely to perceive the target emotion as the dominant emotion. Emotionperception was not related to disinhibition or change in interpersonal relationships. Conclusions: Theseresults support previous claims that hyposmia has prognostic significance following TBI. On the otherhand, emotion perception impairment measured by standardized tasks does not appear to be an importantfactor in interpersonal outcomes. Finally, these results suggest that standardized emotion perception tasksmay underestimate the emotion perception capabilities of people with TBI