Patients with chronic spinal cord injury exhibit reduced autonomic modulation during an emotion recognition task

Abstract

© 2017 Varas-Díaz, Brunetti, Rivera-Lillo and Maldonado.Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating event for individuals, who frequently develop motor and sensory impairment as well as autonomic dysfunction. Previous studies reported that autonomic activity plays a major role in social cognition and that difficulties in the ability to interpret social information are commonly observed in a variety of mental disorders, which in turn correlate with a poor autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation. It is well established that subjects with SCI have an alteration in ANS regulation mechanisms. We hypothesized that subjects diagnosed with SCI, who are experiencing a period of adaptation and socio-labor insertion suffer alterations in an emotion recognition task, a component of social cognition, which correlate with poor ANS regulation. We evaluated ANS function by measuring the heart rate variability (HRV) in 18 healthy subjects and 10 subjects with SCI. A 5-min baseline HRV was compared to a