ABSTRACT
One of the most challenging tasks when dealing with patients with brain injury is the successful inclusion of emotional variables in evaluations and treatment plans. Emotion is considered to be at the centre of all therapeutic work with brain-injured patients. A direct symptom is a change in function that is clearly the result of brain injury. Indirect symptoms often reflect patients' struggles to adapt and/or their efforts to avoid their struggles. Emotions are the perception of the internal state of the body. When one experiences an emotion such as anger, he/she perceives nothing but he/she owns subjective physiological response to an external event. These bodily changes, which are often emotion-specific, are communicated to brain structures that map the internal state of the body. Evidence demonstrates that all the mammals, including humans, are born with a set of basic emotion systems.
