Irritability Following Traumatic Brain Injury

Background: Neurobehavioral disturbances following traumatic brain injury (TBI) are not uncommon. Those disturbances can be further detrimental to patients’ social and occupational functions despite the degree of the TBI severity. Even though past studies have evidenced that irritability is one of the most devastating neurobehavioral difficulties after TBI, few researchers investigated the disease course of irritability following head traumas and could not reveal its underlying neuropsychological mechanism. This study thus aims to prospectively examine the irritability after traumas and tries to unveil the etiology of irritability. Methods: This is a two-year prospectively designed study to explore the irritability post-TBI. All participants were evaluated by four domains of neurobehavioral functions, which included irritability, cognitive functions, emotions and behaviors, stress coping abilities and clinical outcomes. Expected Results: Patients with TBI presented remarkable irritability. However, the manifestations of irritability are different between patients with mild TBI and ones with moderate-to-severe TBI. Moreover, the etiology of irritability might be multi-dimensional, which contained neuropathological and psychosocial factors.

Project ID:PF10001-0031
External Project ID:NSC99-2410-H182-012-MY2