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The Impact of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury on Emotion Regulation

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Janeen Martin¹ (), Thomas Rawliuk¹, Ernest Opoku-Agyeman¹, Maria Gershfang¹, Magdalena Wojtowicz², Steven G. Greening¹; ¹University of Manitoba, ²York University

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), commonly referred to as a concussion, has been associated with difficulties in emotion regulation, which includes both explicit (conscious awareness) and implicit (unconscious awareness) processes. Difficulties in emotion regulation may contribute to real-world challenges such as interpersonal conflict, increased emotional reactivity, and reduced coping to daily stressors. This study investigated how mTBI affects both forms of emotion regulation and whether impairments extend to executive functioning domains such as working memory and attentional control. We collected a preliminary sample of 56 participants (28 with a history of mTBI and 28 without). Participants completed explicit (cognitive reappraisal) and implicit (emotion dot probe) emotion regulation tasks, along with five executive functioning tasks measuring attention control and working memory. Preliminary analyses were conducted on a trial-by-trial ratings of positive and negative affect across each condition within the cognitive reappraisal task. Results indicated no main effect of group and no interaction effect, however, there was a significant main effect of condition. This suggests that, irrespective of group, participants demonstrated the ability to reappraise negative images effectively. Given the preliminary nature of these findings, the results indicate that participants were able to successfully regulate their emotions by both down-regulating negative affect and up-regulating positive affect. Overall, future analyses will further examine how mTBI affects conscious and unconscious emotion regulation and the cognitive mechanisms underlying these emotional challenges.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions