Event Abstract Back to Event Investigating the relationship between mild head injury, physiological arousal, and neuropsychological performance: Is there residual orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction with respect to processing social and emotional information? D. Good1* and S. Van Noordt2 1 Brock University, Department of Psychology and Centre for Neurosciences, Canada 2 Brock University, Department of Psychology, Canada The purpose of these studies was to elucidate the relationships between neuropsychological performance and physiological arousal in university students who have or have not reported a history of MHI. In Study 1, 40 participants, 16 (40%) reporting history of MHI, completed tasks of affect recognition, cognitive flexibility, and reasoning. In Study 2, 44 different participants were recruited, 18 (41%) reporting history of MHI, and performed a design fluency task and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) while electrodermal activity (EDA) was recorded. Study 1 found group differences in affect recognition performance with the MHI group being less successful in discriminating facial expressions, particularly displays of anger. MHI status predicted anger recognition performance over and above the influence of abstract and social reasoning. Study 2 found both groups performed comparably on the design fluency. Overall IGT performance was similar between groups, but self-reported MHI severity negatively predicted IGT performance. EDA magnitude to decision outcomes indicated that individuals with MHI are aroused at levels comparable to their non-MHI cohorts. Nevertheless, the MHI group was significantly less aroused during the anticipatory stages of decision-making. These findings indicate that MHI can negatively impact psychophysiological mechanisms which support adaptive social behaviour. Conference: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes, Toronto, Canada, 22 Mar - 26 Mar, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Neuropsychology Citation: Good D and Van Noordt S (2010). Investigating the relationship between mild head injury, physiological arousal, and neuropsychological performance: Is there residual orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction with respect to processing social and emotional information?. Conference Abstract: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.14.00176 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 01 Jul 2010; Published Online: 01 Jul 2010. * Correspondence: D. Good, Brock University, Department of Psychology and Centre for Neurosciences, St. Catherines, Canada, Dawn.good@brocku.ca Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers D. Good S. Van Noordt Google D. Good S. Van Noordt Google Scholar D. Good S. Van Noordt PubMed D. Good S. Van Noordt Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.