Autonomic arousal and fear in the spinal cord injured.

Abstract

A quasi-experimental design was used to test the relationship between neurological status (cervical complete spinal cord injury versus lower thoracic-lumbar spinal cord injury versus no injury — 15 subjects each group), physiological arousal, and self-reports of fear in subjects exposed to a fear-inducing film segment. Partial support was obtained for the hypothesis that neurological status is related to physiological arousal. Non-injured subjects displayed the greatest arousal, with significant increases in pulse rate (p ◂ .001) and moderate increases in systolic (p = .06) and diastolic (p = .09) blood pressures during the film. Subjects with lower spinal cord injury showed equally significant increases in pulse rate (p ◂ .001), but only slight increases in diastolic blood pressure and no increases in systolic blood pressure. Those with complete cervical injury showed random fluctuations in all of the physiological measurements. No group showed any significant changes in respiratory rate. Moderate support for the expected relationship between neurological status and self-reports of fear was found at a probability level of p = .07. The group with complete cervical injury reported less fear than the group with lower spinal cord injury or the non-injured group.