B - 35 Recall of the Injury Event in Moderate–Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract Objective Autobiographical recall can be impoverished in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). We explored whether the recall of the TBI event was unique to this trend since the event is both self-defining and traumatic. Methods We recruited 30 non-injured comparison participants (NC) and 30 participants in the chronic phase of a moderate–severe TBI from the Brain Injury Patient Registry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Participants in the TBI group recalled their TBI event and a self-selected event from 0–5 years before the TBI. The NC group recalled a self-selected event that matched the pre-injury’s temporal distance. We used the Autobiographical Interview scoring system to test whether events differed in the amount and type of details. Results Compared to the pre-injury event, the injury event had a higher number of episodic-like, p = 0.002, and external details (e.g., repetition and meta-comments), p = 0.011. The injury and pre-injury events had a similar proportion of episodic-like details (relative to all details), p = 0.295, indicating events were similarly supplemented with extraneous/inferential information. Further, the pre-injury event of the TBI group had a smaller number of episodic-like details, p < 0.001, and a lower proportion of episodic-like details, p = 0.002, than the events from the NC group. Conclusion Whereas the recall of injury events may be unique due to their higher number of episodic-like details, they were also similar to general autobiographical memory recall in the preponderance of supplementary details. A confluence of factors, like personal relevance, compromised encoding due to loss of consciousness at the time of injury, and general difficulties in retrieval, may explain the findings.