Kay Waid-Ebbs, Ph.D. and John B. Williamson, Ph.D. were awarded a two year grant from the Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Research and Development entitled “Innovative multimodal and attention training to improve emotion communication in Veterans with TBI and PTSD”.
Poor emotion recognition has been associated with poor relationship quality, loss of employment, behavioral problems, social isolation and even suicide. Deficits in poor emotion recognition are common in traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but have not been well studied in Veterans with both mild TBI and PTSD. As a result, there are no interventions for these patients. In a preliminary study of combing facial and vocal modalities, a multimodal affect recognition training (MMART) showed promise but lacked attention training that is an essential component in recognizing emotions in our daily lives.
The objective of this study is to determine the treatment effect of MMART combined with attention training in Veterans with TBI/PTSD to improve the Veteran’s performance on emotion recognition tests. 20 Veterans with mTBI and PTSD with be enrolled in the study and assigned to either a randomized group with the combined training or to an inactive control group. Both groups will attend 16, one-hour in-person sessions over eight weeks, the study is expected to begin December 2022.
For more information on the study and to check eligibility criteria: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05478759