Comments on: Reduced Empathy Following Traumatic Brain Injury

By: meredith

meredith — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:24:34 +0000

As a TBI survivor for 17 years now, I wonder if the lack of empathy we may have (my painful experience would confirm that lack) also is upon ourselves. I have had to struggle with sorrow for my difficulty in empathizing with 2 of the people I love the most (my 10yr.old son and 8 yr.old daughter whom I home school) and I battle that someone who gives so much of her life for her children can be so non-empathetic to these same children. As for the severity of my ABI, I was in a coma for 8 days and hospitalized for 4 1/2 months as I learned how to re encultrate with my, then new, personality-now it’s just who I am. My husband of 12 years and children don’t know me any different. The struggles I have we struggle with as a family.

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:03:39 +0000

I am not familiar with this study or with the BEE, but is it possible that the people who have had a TBI are not sympathetic because of their emotional state after surviving a TBI. What are the limitations they put on the people surveyed? Are these people completely healed or was there significant and un-repairable damage to some people surveyed? How does the specific severity relate to the amount of empathy?

By: The Natural Number Encephalon « Neuroanthropology

The Natural Number Encephalon « Neuroanthropology — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:48:20 +0000

[...] and on alcohol, it’s deeply stimulating. So if you’re looking for a legal defense or empathy, or just a yank on your momentum chain, go check out the cybernetic Encephalon put together by Paul [...]

By: Jared Tanner

Jared Tanner — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:19:21 +0000

To answer your questions: No, the authors did not really consider the “uniqueness” of each TBI because as with any aggregate statistical analysis, you lose much of the individuality by talking about groups. You can go back and look at individuals later but it is difficult to understand the big picture by focusing only on individuals, as interesting and personally meaningful as that might be. So yes, the authors do “pile it all into generalizations” as is common practice in most statistical analyses. However, any one who uses statistics honestly will be the first to tell you that just because we know that 61% of a group of TBI patients had low empathy scores (39% did not), tells you nothing about the individual. The world of statistics can be cold and harsh but it’s one of the foundational methods of science.

By: canadian

canadian — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:50:31 +0000

Hello,This may be true for most with frontal lobe injury but for many with other damage i.e. temporal lobe , we have more empathy. I even notice right sided injurys have more empathy. Does this study take into consideration that each injury unique? So pile it all into generalizations? What about predispositions? I wonder how they figure this without personally having this experience to draw from.
As many have told me ” you can’t understand you don’t have tbi.”