Traumatic brain injury can have long-term physical, behavioral, and cognitive effects that limit one's ability to participate in social activities. The inability to discern emotions from facial expressions has also been linked to these issues. In fact, effective social relationships rely heavily on emotional awareness. Particularly, emotional facial expressions give crucial clues to decipher the intentions of others and eventually direct conduct. In previous behavioral investigations conducted after moderate to severe TBI, deficiencies in identifying emotions from facial expressions,particularly negative ones (such as fear, anger, sadness, or disgust) as opposed to positive ones (such as happiness), have been documented. The prefrontal cortex (including the ventromedial and orbitofrontal) and limbic structures (including the amygdala, temporal lobes, and fusiform gyrus), which are important in emotional processing, are frequently harmed or disrupted after a moderate or severe Traumatic brain injury, and even after mild Traumatic brain injury.
