The relationship between body image and emotional and cognitive impairment after brain damage: A preliminary study

<p><strong>Introduction:&nbsp;</strong>The image of one&#39;s own body derives from experimentation of one&#39;s own body pattern. The emotional experience can lead to a real or distorted self-representation. After brain damage, a disorder of body image is frequent. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of body image following acquired brain injury (ABI).</p> <p><strong>Methods:&nbsp;</strong>Forty-six hospitalized patients were enrolled and subdivided into two groups depending on the etiology of the damage: traumatic or vascular. For each group, we considered their cognitive level and mood. Patients underwent a broad battery of tests to investigate different domains: Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA); Beck&#39;s Depression Inventory (BDI-II); Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety (HAM-A); Clinical Insight Rating Scale (CIRS); Body Image Scale (BIS); Human Figure Drawing (HFD). The latter was used to assess the implicit body image of each patient.</p> <p><strong>Results:&nbsp;</strong>Both groups showed a significant relationship between BDI-II and BIS. A positive correlation was found between BIS and HAM-A, but only in the traumatic group. We showed a positive correlation between MoCA and HFD. In addition, we observed some subitems of MoCA as predictive variables in HFD, which differ in the two groups. In a traumatic group, the visuospatial domain is predictive in HFD, as well as age of patients&#39; and education. In the vascular groups, orientation, naming, abstraction, and language domains are instead predictive.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions:&nbsp;</strong>The results confirm the crucial role of the cognitive level and mood on self-perception.</p>