Alexithymia: The story of a survivor of childhood traumatic brain injury

Abstract

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.

• Alexithymia
• occipital lobe
• social cognition
• TBI
• traumatic brain injuries
• visual cortex

Acknowledgements

We thank Helena Tam for her assistance with data collection.