Head injuries can make children loners

New neurological research has indicated that head injuries in children could affect their relationships for years after sustaining the injury.

The study, conducted by neuroscientists at Brigham Young University (BYU), studied a group of children who had suffered a traumatic brain injury three years after the incident. The researchers found that damage to a specific region of the brain could predict the health of their relationships and social lives later in life.

Shawn Gale, a neuropsychologist at BYU, said the hardest thing about brain injury is that someone can have significant difficulties but still look okay. This can include having problems concentrating and remembering, as well as the way they interact with people around them, he added.

Mr Gale said: "Since they look fine, people don't cut them as much slack as they ought to."

The study, published in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, compared the children's social lives and thinking skills with the thickness of the brain's outer layer in the frontal lobe. These measurements were produced from MRI scans, while details concerning their behaviour were provided by their parents on a number of levels. Among other things, they were asked about their child's participation in groups, the number of friends they had and how much time they spent with them.

However, the research also suggests a potential treatment option. The research team found that physical injury and social withdrawal are connected through cognitive proficiency, which is the combination of short-term memory and the brain's processing speed.

"In social interactions we need to process the content of what a person is saying in addition to simultaneously processing nonverbal cues," Ms Levan, who co-wrote the study with Mr Gale, said. 

"We then have to hold that information in our working memory to be able to respond appropriately. If you disrupt working memory or processing speed it can result in difficulty with social interactions."
Previous research on children with ADHD, which affects the frontal lobes, has found that therapy can improve working memory. This is an area that the research team would like to explore further in more studies to discover whether working memory could "treat" the social difficulties brought on by head injuries.