Citation

Worthington A, Wood RL. Neuropsychologia 2018; 118(Pt B): 40-47.

Affiliation

College of Medicine, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea Wales, UK SA2 8PP.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.04.012

PMID

29660377

Abstract

Apathy is a common problem after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and can have a major impact on cognitive function, psychosocial outcome and engagement in rehabilitation. For scientists and clinicians it remains one of the least understood aspects of brain-behaviour relationships encompassing disturbances of cognition, motivation, emotion and action, and is variously an indication of organic brain disease or psychiatric disorder. Apathy can be both sign and symptom and has been proposed as a diagnosis in its own right as well as a secondary feature of other conditions. This review considers previous approaches to apathy in terms of relevant psychological constructs and those neural counterparts most likely to be implicated after TBI. Neurobehavioural disorders of apathy are characterised chiefly by dysfunction of executive control of goal-oriented behaviour or the neural substrates of reward-based and emotional learning. We argue that it is possible to distinguish a primary disorder of apathy as an organic neurobehavioural state from secondary presentations due to an impoverished environment or psychological disturbance which has implications for treatment.

Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Language: en

Keywords

Apathy; Executive function; Motivation; Traumatic brain injury