Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Réadaptation et Intégration Sociale, Centre de Recherche Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Quebec, Medical School, Laval University, Quebec city, Quebec, Canada ; Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Réadaptation et Intégration Sociale, Centre de Recherche Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Quebec, Medical School, Laval University, Quebec city, Quebec, Canada.
PLoS One. 2013 Dec 26;8(12):e83598. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0083598. eCollection 2013.
Rehabilitation can improve cognitive deficits observed in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, despite rehabilitation, the ability of making a choice often remains impaired. Risk taking is a daily activity involving numerous cognitive processes subserved by a complex neural network. In this work we investigated risk taking using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) in patients with acute TBI and healthy controls. We hypothesized that individuals with TBI will take less risk at the BART as compared to healthy individuals. We also predicted that within the TBI group factors such as the number of days since the injury, severity of the injury, and sites of the lesion will play a role in risk taking as assessed with the BART. Main findings revealed that participants with TBI displayed abnormally cautious risk taking at the BART as compared to healthy subjects. Moreover, healthy individuals showed increased risk taking throughout the task which is in line with previous work. However, individuals with TBI did not show this increased risk taking during the task. We also investigated the influence of three patients' characteristics on their performance at the BART: Number of days post injury, Severity of the head injury, and Status of the frontal lobe. Results indicate that performance at the BART was influenced by the number of days post injury and the status of the frontal lobe, but not by the severity of the head injury. Reported findings are encouraging for risk taking seems to naturally improve with time postinjury. They support the need of conducting longitudinal prospective studies to ultimately identify impaired and intact cognitive skills that should be trained postinjury.
康复可以改善创伤性脑损伤（TBI）患者观察到的认知缺陷。然而，尽管进行了康复，做出选择的能力往往仍然受损。冒险是一种日常活动，涉及到许多认知过程，这些过程由一个复杂的神经网络来支持。在这项工作中，我们使用气球模拟风险任务（BART）在急性 TBI 患者和健康对照组中研究了冒险行为。我们假设与健康个体相比，TBI 患者在 BART 中承担的风险较小。我们还预测，在 TBI 组中，受伤后天数、受伤严重程度和病变部位等因素将在 BART 评估的风险承担中发挥作用。主要发现表明，与健康受试者相比，TBI 参与者在 BART 上表现出异常谨慎的风险承担。此外，健康个体在整个任务中表现出增加的风险承担，这与之前的工作一致。然而，TBI 个体在任务中没有表现出这种增加的风险承担。我们还研究了三个患者特征对他们在 BART 上的表现的影响：受伤后天数、头部损伤严重程度和额叶状态。结果表明，BART 的表现受受伤后天数和额叶状态的影响，但不受头部损伤严重程度的影响。报告的发现令人鼓舞，因为冒险似乎随着受伤后时间的推移而自然改善。它们支持进行纵向前瞻性研究的必要性，以最终确定受伤后应接受训练的受损和完整的认知技能。
