No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Upright posture improves affect and fatigue in people with depressive symptoms
Abstract
Background and objectives:
Slumped posture is a diagnostic feature of depression. While research shows upright posture improves self-esteem and mood in healthy samples, little research has investigated this in depressed samples. This study aimed to investigate whether changing posture could reduce negative affect and fatigue in people with mild to moderate depression undergoing a stressful task.
Methods:
Sixty-one community participants who screened positive for mild to moderate depression were recruited into a study purportedly on the effects of physiotherapy tape on cognitive function. They were randomized to sit with usual posture or upright posture and physiotherapy tape was applied. Participants completed the Trier Social Stress Test speech task. Changes in affect and fatigue were assessed. The words spoken by the participants during their speeches were analysed.
Results:
At baseline, all participants had significantly more slumped posture than normative data. The postural manipulation significantly improved posture and increased high arousal positive affect and fatigue compared to usual posture. The upright group spoke significantly more words than the usual posture group, used fewer first person singular personal pronouns, but more sadness words. Upright shoulder angle was associated with lower negative affect and lower anxiety across both groups.
Limitations:
The experiment was only brief and a non-clinical sample was used.
Conclusions:
This preliminary study suggests that adopting an upright posture may increase positive affect, reduce fatigue, and decrease self-focus in people with mild-to-moderate depression. Future research should investigate postural manipulations over a longer time period and in samples with clinically diagnosed depression.
Link to paper http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1TUUI1KHtEtgN
... As we know from such everyday experiences, gait and posture are good indicators of mood state. The bidirectionality between mood and gait/posture is well known; improvement or deterioration in gait and/or posture can lead to positive or negative mood and vice versa [1], [2], [3]. Upright posture improves affect and fatigue in individuals with depressive symptoms [3]. ...
... The bidirectionality between mood and gait/posture is well known; improvement or deterioration in gait and/or posture can lead to positive or negative mood and vice versa [1], [2], [3]. Upright posture improves affect and fatigue in individuals with depressive symptoms [3]. In contrast, a stooped trunk posture leads to less mood recovery from experimentally induced negative mood using a mental imagery task [2]. ...
... The gait features of STOOPED and SHORT supported our hypothesis, suggesting that stooped trunk posture induces shorter strides, but not vice versa. It has been reported that improvement [3] or deterioration [2] of the For participants whose initial contact was with the left leg, the pelvic rotation angle was multiplied by -1 to unify the directions before calculating the ensemble average (thus, a positive value represents the rotation toward the contralateral side to the initial contact leg). stooped posture can enhance positive or negative mood. ...
Gait and posture are effective indicators of mood state. This relationship is bi-directional: improvements in gait and/or posture can improve mood, and vice versa. Previous studies have described spatiotemporal and kinematic features of gait and posture in individuals with depression or negative mood (e.g., stooped posture, shorter stride, lower speed) in parallel, without specifying whether these features are dependent of each other. However, some of the features may not be independent but secondary to other features. Here we show asymmetric kinematic responses to verbal instructions during overground walking in 20 healthy adults (10 females, 10 males), measured using a motion capture system with markers attached to the limbs and individual spinous processes. In the 'stooped posture' condition, the thoracic kyphosis is more pronounced (quasi-Cobb angle:-37.3 ± 5.6°), as instructed, and the stride length (1.22 ± 0.11 m) and the speed (1.16 ± 0.11 m/s) are lower than normal walking without any instructions (-29.1 ± 5.6°, 1.29 ± 0.12 m, 1.23 ± 0.13 m/s), even without specific instructions on stride parameters. In the 'shorter stride' condition, the stride is shorter (0.96 ± 0.15 m) as instructed and the speed is lower (0.92 ± 0.17 m/s), while the thoracic kyphosis is similar (-28.8 ± 6.1°) to that of normal walking. Our observation suggests the unidirectional relationship that a shorter stride can occur secondary to a stooped posture but not vice versa. We suggest recognizing that some of gait features in negative mood may simply be secondary to other kinematic features.
... In addition, the slouched posture affects motor responses to cognitive tasks [11,12] and the reduction of respiratory function [13]. These adverse influences caused by mechanical and neural alterations were found to be related not only to motor function but also to cognitive and psychological function [14][15][16][17]. In previous studies, subjects with slouched postures tended to be lethargic and had increased stress and depression [15][16][17]. ...
... These adverse influences caused by mechanical and neural alterations were found to be related not only to motor function but also to cognitive and psychological function [14][15][16][17]. In previous studies, subjects with slouched postures tended to be lethargic and had increased stress and depression [15][16][17]. ...
... Second, data were re-referenced to the average of all channels without the EOG and ECG electrodes using the reference electrode standardization technique (REST) [32]. Finally, for frequency analysis, fast Fourier transform was used for relative spectral power density (%) of the delta (0.5-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz), beta (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), and gamma (30-50 Hz) waves. The relative power spectral density was determined by computing the ratio of delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves within the frequency range spanning from 0.5 Hz to 50 Hz. ...
Forward head posture (FHP) is a common postural problem experienced by most people. However, its effect on brain activity is still unknown. Accordingly, we aimed to observe changes in brain waves at rest to determine the effect of FHP on the nervous systems. A total of 33 computer users (Male = 17; Female = 16; age = 22.18 ± 1.88) were examined in both FHP and neutral posture. For each session, brain waves were measured for 5 min, and then muscle mechanical properties and cranio-vertebral angle (CVA) were measured. Changes in brain waves between the neutral posture and FHP were prominent in gamma waves. A notable increase was confirmed in the frontal and parietal lobes. That is, eight channels in the frontal lobe and all channels in the parietal lobe showed a significant increase in FHP compared to neutral posture. Additionally, FHP changes were associated with a decrease in CVA (p < 0.001), an increase in levator scapulae tone (Right, p = 0.014; Left, p = 0.001), and an increase in right sternocleidomastoid stiffness (p = 0.002), and a decrease in platysma elasticity (Right, p = 0.039; Left, p = 0.017). The change in CVA was found to have a negative correlation with the gamma activity (P7, p = 0.044; P8, p = 0.004). Therefore, increased gamma wave activity in FHP appears to be related to CVA decrease due to external force that was applied to the nervous system and cervical spine.
... According to the wide and growing field of health psychology, researchers point out that there is no logical reason to creat a disease out of its psycho-somatic domain (Hill, 1968). Mental illnesses can affect the body position (Wilkes et al., 2017). A person suffering from depression feels weak and disability, so that this situation has a negative effect on the way the body is placed in various states (Wilkes et al., 2017). ...
... Mental illnesses can affect the body position (Wilkes et al., 2017). A person suffering from depression feels weak and disability, so that this situation has a negative effect on the way the body is placed in various states (Wilkes et al., 2017). Merleau-Ponty's comments are among these efforts to establish the union of mind and body. ...
... The final articles include ten case-control studies (Canales et al., 2010;Michalak et al., 2014;Babekir, 2007;Park et al., 2015;Wilkes et al., 2017;Nair et al., 2015;Bolbecker et al., 2011;Michalak et al., 2009;Doumas et al., 2012;Lemke et al., 2000), nine cross-sectional studies (kim et al., 2018;Canales et al., 2017;Alizadeh et al., 2004;Moslehi et al., 2011;Samadi, 2008;Rosario et al., 2014;Lin et al., 2019;Meshgin et al., 2018;Wilson and Peper, 2004), two Cohort studies (Chang et al., 2016;Sanders et al., 2016), one pilot study (Handrakis et al., 2012) and one periodic study (Asadi-Melerdi et al. 2020) (Refer to Tables 1, 2 and 3 for more details). ...
The relationship between posture and psyche has not been sufficiently studied and paid attention to, despite its importance and significant impact on life. The aims of present study are to systematically review the scientific framework of research on the relationship between depression and posture and conduct a comprehensive summary of previous analyses. The entered keywords were Depression, Posture, Alignment, gait and Spine deformities. A time filter was applied from 2000 to 2022. Studies that were conducted on people with special physical condition and diseases were excluded from the present research. The quality of the studies included in the current research was evaluated through the Newcastle–Ottawa scale. Also, the current research was based on the principles of PRISMA. In the initial search, 3075 articles were entered. Based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and after reviewing the abstracts and full texts, 23 articles were selected for final evaluation in the present study. 23 studies include ten case–control, nine cross-sectional, one pilot study, two Cohort and one periodic with overall High -medium quality. Various tools were used to evaluate posture and gait (such as cameras & Motion analysis system). In general, the findings of the studies show that people with depression have a more slumped posture. These people usually suffer from deformities such as kyphosis, forward head and forward shoulder. By reviewing the studies, we found a significant correlation between depression and spine abnormalities. It seems that this relationship is more evident in Girls than boys and happens more in high school ages.
... For example, abnormal cervical lordosis reduces blood flow in the vertebral artery [11]. It is also known to cause complicated problems related to increased stress and poor cognitive and psychological performance [11][12][13][14]. Subjects with slouched postures tend to be lethargic, have decreased levels of arousal, and experience increased stress and depression [12][13][14]. ...
... It is also known to cause complicated problems related to increased stress and poor cognitive and psychological performance [11][12][13][14]. Subjects with slouched postures tend to be lethargic, have decreased levels of arousal, and experience increased stress and depression [12][13][14]. Therefore, poor VDT posture can adversely affect the work performance of VDT workers owing to decreased physical, physiological, and behavioral performance. ...
... Similar to the present results, various effects of upright posture on cognitive function have been reported in previous studies. Wilkes (2017) and Cohen (2016) argued that a straight thoracic spine was associated with high arousal, and that forward head posture was associated with poor performance in episodic memory [12,14]. Therefore, the upright posture of VDT_U could respond faster to the 2-back task with the same false rate, which corresponds to an improvement in the working memory performance. ...
The forward head posture of visual display terminal (VDT) users induces various physical and cognitive clinical symptoms. However, few studies have been conducted to identify and solve problems associated with VDT posture. This study aimed to examine the adverse effects of VDT posture and the positive effects of traction-combined workstations by measuring postural alignment, muscle properties, blood velocity, preference, and working memory. Thirty-four healthy VDT users (18 males and 16 females aged 20–30 years) participated in the experiment at three workstations, including conventional (VDT_C), head support (VDT_S), and upright (VDT_U) workstations. They conducted 2-back working memory task. The craniovertebral angle (CVA), muscle tone and stiffness, blood velocity and visual analogue discomfort scale (VADS) were measured to examine the influence of workstations. VDT_C showed increased muscle tone or stiffness in the levator scapulae (LS), suboccipital muscle (SM), and sternocleidomastoid muscle (SCM) and an increased reaction time (RT) in working memory. However, VDT_S showed decreased stiffness and tone of SM and improved comfort. In addition, VDT_U showed decreased stiffness or tone of the LS and SCM and improved blood velocity and RT. In conclusion, maintaining neutral alignment significantly improved working memory performance, muscle properties, and blood velocity.
... Furthermore, we expect that repeated movement patterns, especially in an open and upright posture in the vertical plane, can help improve the user's mood [27,28], reduce fatigue, and help improve focus for people with mild-to-moderate depression [29]. Movements with large ranges of each joint (ie, open or space-consuming posture) are defined as high power or powerful poses. ...
... Feeling depressed is also associated with poor posture, that is, sitting in a slouched position [29]. A novel study [29] investigated whether changing posture could reduce negative affect and fatigue in people with mild-to-moderate depression undergoing a stressful task. ...
... Feeling depressed is also associated with poor posture, that is, sitting in a slouched position [29]. A novel study [29] investigated whether changing posture could reduce negative affect and fatigue in people with mild-to-moderate depression undergoing a stressful task. The study found that adopting an upright posture appeared to increase positive affect, reduce fatigue, and decrease self-focus in people with mild-to-moderate depression. ...
Background
Depression is a severe illness that has accelerated with the spread of COVID-19 and associated lockdowns. As a result, reported physical activity has substantially decreased, further increasing depressive symptoms.
Objective
This study aims to explain the use of gamification principles to develop content for an interactive physical activity game for depression based on clinically proven depression diagnostic criteria.
Methods
We discuss related work in this field, the game design framework, the users’ depression severity, how we customize the contents accordingly, the gradual progression of the game to match exercise principles, and user flow optimization.
Results
We provide a brief description of each of the games developed, including instructions on how to play and design aspects for flow, audio, and visual feedback methods. Exergames (interactive physical activity–based games) stimulate certain physical fitness factors such as improving reaction time, endurance, cardiovascular fitness, and flexibility. In addition, the game difficulty progresses based on various factors, such as the user’s performance for successful completion, reaction time, movement speed, and stimulated larger joint range of motions. Cognitive aspects are included, as the user has to memorize particular movement sequences.
Conclusions
Mental health issues are linked to behavior and movement; therefore, future physical activity–based interactive games may provide excellent stimulation for inducing user flow, while physical activity can help train various physical fitness factors linked to depression.
... Riskind and Gotay (1982) compared persistence in a learned helplessness task between individuals who assumed slumped and upright postures and found less persistence in the former. Further, Wilkes et al. (2017) conducted posture manipulation among individuals with mild-to-moderate depression and found that participants who adopted an upright posture had greater arousal levels and positive affect. Furthermore, in educational settings, individuals are more confident of their thoughts when they assume an upright posture (Briñol et al., 2009). ...
... In a psychology class, 110 students (29 men, 76 women, five unknown gender) agreed to participate in the study and answered the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (A-ADHD; Fukunishi, 2016; 1-4 Likert Scale). The sample size was planned to be 25-30 participants per group, based on similar previous studies (Wilkes et al., 2017) and power analysis (Murai & Hashimoto, 2018). However, after we excluded those who did not meet the criteria, in the same way as Study 1 and 2, besides grouping criteria according to A-ADHD (as described below), 19 students (two men, 17 women, M age = 18.26 years, SD = 0.56 years) participated in the experiment in total. ...
We explored body‐scan postures suitable for people with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tendency by developing and validating the Mindfulness Encouraging/Discouraging Reactions Scales (MERS/MDRS), using university students. In Study 1, we conducted a survey to collect typical positive and negative reactions during mindfulness exercises from 21 participants and created the preliminary items. In Study 2, 192 participants completed existing state/trait mindfulness scales and the preliminary MERS and MDRS after mindful breathing. Based on an item response model, we developed and validated MERS and MDRS. In Study 3, 19 participants were categorized into one of four groups: (a) combined, (b) hyperactive/impulsive, (c) inattentive, and (d) without ADHD tendencies. They performed body‐scan meditations with each of the counterbalanced postures (upright, slumped, leaning‐back sitting, and supine), and completed the questionnaires. The analysis showed that those with hyperactivity/impulsivity tendency found the body‐scan meditation a challenge with the slumped posture and easier to perform in the supine posture; the upright posture provided high and low MERS to the hyperactivity/impulsivity tendency group and combined group, respectively; and sleepiness correlated with MERS in the supine posture ( r = .49) and the upright posture ( r = .51). We identified helpful body scan postures for people with ADHD tendency, using MERS and MDRS, but it was noted that these scales were created solely based on intuitive impressions for beginners, and it is not recommended that the items included in them be aimed for or avoided.
... Embodiment cognition studies have reported that cognitive and brain activity changes depend on various postures. In particular, the upright posture is commonly recommended rather than the slouched posture because of its effectiveness in improving self-confidence, arousal, and reducing stress [12,13]. According to the recent research, upright posture is associated with high-frequency brain activity compared to the slouched posture, which is linked to increased alertness. ...
... Second, the data were re-referenced to the average of all channels without EOG and ECG electrodes using the reference electrode standardization technique (REST) [33]. Finally, for the frequency analysis, a fast Fourier transform was used for the relative spectral power density (%) of the delta (0.5-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13), beta (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), beta 2 (15-20 Hz), beta 3 , and gamma (30-50 Hz) waves. The general characteristics of each band are presented in Table 2. ...
The most common risk factor of computer workers is poor head and neck posture. Therefore, upright seated posture has been recommended repeatedly. However, maintaining an upright seated posture is challenging during computer work and induces various complaints, such as fatigue and discomfort, which can interfere working performance. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain an upright posture without complaints or intentional efforts during long-term computer work. Alignment devices are an appropriate maneuver to support postural control for maintaining head-neck orientation and reduce head weight. This study aimed to demonstrate the effects of workstations combined with alignment device on head-neck alignment, muscle properties, comfort and working memory ability in computer workers. Computer workers (n = 37) participated in a total of three sessions (upright computer (CPT_U), upright support computer (CPT_US), traction computer (CPT_T) workstations). The craniovertebral angle, muscles tone and stiffness, visual analog discomfort scale score, 2-back working memory performance, and electroencephalogram signals were measured. All three workstations had a substantial effect on maintaining head-neck alignment (p< 0.001), but only CPT_US showed significant improvement on psychological comfort (p = 0.04) and working memory performance (p = 0.024), which is consistent with an increase in delta power. CPT_U showed the increased beta 2 activity, discomfort, and false rates compared to CPT_US. CPT_T showed increased alpha and beta 2 activity and decreased delta activity, which are not conductive to working memory performance. In conclusion, CPT_US can effectively induce efficient neural oscillations without causing any discomfort by increasing delta and decreasing beta 2 activity for working memory tasks.
... Intentional shifts in the body during the practice, such as changes in posture and facial expression, may impact on emotional states [51]. For example, Wilkes et al. (2017) [52] found that upright posture increased positive affect in participants with depressive symptoms. ...
... Intentional shifts in the body during the practice, such as changes in posture and facial expression, may impact on emotional states [51]. For example, Wilkes et al. (2017) [52] found that upright posture increased positive affect in participants with depressive symptoms. ...
Soothing-rhythm breathing (SRB) is a core component of compassion focused therapy (CFT). While integral to CFT, research has yet to explore personal experiences of SRB. This study aimed to explore the experiences of individuals with depression who had practiced SRB in NHS primary care services. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyse data from individual semi-structured interviews. Three experiential themes were identified: ‘mind-body connection and bodily needs’, ‘a new relationship with the mind’, and ‘slowing down: shifting to the new and challenging’. Results highlighted the benefits of connecting with the body and the challenges of practicing SRB. Clinical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.
... Later research using this paradigm has shown that an upright posture helped to maintain self-esteem and positive mood compared to a slumped posture during a stressor [7]. In a similar study, an upright posture was shown to improve mood and reduce fatigue in people with mild-moderate depression [8]. ...
... This study was not performed with a clinical population, but the findings may still be informative for clinicians. Sad mood and low control were consistently reported by participants when in the sitting slumped posture, and, therefore, encouraging a more upright/neutral posture amongst depressed patients may help to improve mood, at least in the short term [8]. ...
Some evidence suggests body postures can elicit emotion. Compared to neutral postures, constrictive postures are associated with negative affect and low arousal, whereas expansive postures have shown mixed effects. Qualitative methods may allow insights into this phenomenon. We asked 15 participants (mean age 43 years) to adopt eight different expansive, constrictive, or neutral postures, drawn from previous power posing or postural studies. After a minute in each posture, participants were interviewed about how they felt and when they might adopt the posture in real life. Interviews were audio recorded and inductive thematic analysis conducted. Power poses were associated with power and confidence, but also aggression, arrogance, intimidation, and disrespect. The slumped posture was associated with sadness and low control, and the upright seated posture with being alert and apprehensive as well as formality. Neutral postures were associated with feeling relaxed and comfortable. These results suggest that expansive postures have mixed emotional effects, but are inappropriate in some contexts.
... However, as similar gait patterns have been found in a nonclinical sample when sad mood was induced, the alterations may be attributed to mood and not the clinical condition of depression (Michalak et al., 2009). Concerning posture, one study found that mild to moderately depressed individuals exhibit significantly more slumped posture than non-clinical individuals (Wilkes et al., 2017) and other research has indicated that there is a positive relationship between stooped posture and depression severity (Canales et al., 2010;Nyboe-Jacobsen et al., 2006). ...
... Only a few studies appear to have directly evaluated affective or behavioral outcomes following manipulation of posture or movement within the context of depression (Elkjaer et al., 2022). Of these, one study investigating posture in individuals with subclinical levels of depression found that expansive (upright) posture was associated with more high-arousal positive affect (e.g., enthusiasm) compared to neutral posture, while no differences were identified for lowarousal positive/negative and high-arousal negative affect (Wilkes et al., 2017). Two studies have investigated the effect of motor manipulations on memory bias in depressed individuals. ...
Una revisión de la disfunción corporal en la depresión: hallazgos empíricos, Perspectivas teóricas e implicaciones para el tratamiento
Los trastornos emocionales son características bien reconocidas de la depresión y los programas psicoterapéuticos contemporáneos ofrecen una variedad de estrategias de tratamiento dirigidas directamente a estos trastornos (p. ej., reestructuración cognitiva, descentramiento, aceptación). Además de los trastornos emocionales, la evidencia apunta cada vez más a que la depresión también se caracteriza por una disfunción corporal profunda. El objetivo del presente artículo es evaluar el potencial de disfunciones corporales como objetivo de tratamiento en intervenciones destinadas a aliviar problemas en la depresión. Comenzamos delineando dos de las predicciones teóricas más importantes, aunque divergentes, sobre el papel del cuerpo en y para las emociones. Luego revisamos la evidencia de disfunción corporal en la depresión con un enfoque en la inflamación, el funcionamiento endocrino, el sistema motor (es decir, la postura y el movimiento), la reactividad fisiológica y la interocepción. En nuestra revisión, (a) presentamos una investigación transversal que investiga las diferencias entre grupos sanos y clínicos, (b) describa la evidencia experimental, observando efectos agudos y a largo plazo de la manipulación de parámetros corporales sobre los síntomas de depresión, y (c) explorar evidencia longitudinal sobre cómo la disfunción corporal puede o no normalizarse con el éxito del tratamiento farmacológico o psicológico de la depresión. Concluimos discutiendo cómo la disfunción corporal puede estar moldeando y restringiendo la vida emocional de las personas deprimidas y esbozar cómo el tratamiento dirigido a el alivio de los problemas emocionales en la depresión puede beneficiarse de la orientación corporal disfunción.
... Our bodily interactions with the material world not only reflect how we feel (Barliya et al., 2013;Crane and Gross, 2007;Michalak et al., 2009;Yanagita et al., 2006), but also influence how we feel (Miller and Krizan, 2016;Peper et al., 2017;Veenstra et al., 2017;Wilkes et al., 2017). We use our hands to squeeze objects without being taught. ...
This paper presents our exploratory studies on designing squeezable interfaces for emotion regulation in the workplace. The central question is how bodily interaction with squeezable interfaces can be utilised to promote mental health. We introduce three prototypes of tangible interfaces, seeking to understand how squeezable interfaces could be designed to help emotion regulation in the workplace. We reflect on the results of our pilot studies and outline the direction of our future exploration.
... For example, depression has consistently been linked to characteristic changes in gait and posture (for reviews, see, e.g., [14,15]). Moreover, the experimental manipulation of gait and posture has been shown to lead to changes in emotional experience and depressionrelated cognitive processing (e.g., [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]). That said, facial expression could be even more critical in the context of inducing emotional beliefs since facial muscles are very sensitive and quick to respond to emotional experiences [25]. ...
Background
Dysfunctional depressogenic cognitions are considered a key factor in the etiology and maintenance of depression. In cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the current gold-standard psychotherapeutic treatment for depression, cognitive restructuring techniques are employed to address dysfunctional cognitions. However, high drop-out and non-response rates suggest a need to boost the efficacy of CBT for depression. This might be achieved by enhancing the role of emotional and kinesthetic (i.e., body movement perception) features of interventions. Therefore, we aim to evaluate the efficacy of a cognitive restructuring task augmented with the performance of anti-depressive facial expressions in individuals with and without depression. Further, we aim to investigate to what extent kinesthetic markers are intrinsically associated with and, hence, allow for the detection of, depression.
Methods
In a four-arm, parallel, single-blind, randomized controlled trial (RCT), we will randomize 128 individuals with depression and 128 matched controls without depression to one of four study conditions: (1) a cognitive reappraisal training (CR); (2) CR enhanced with instructions to display anti-depressive facial expressions (CR + AFE); (3) facial muscle training focusing on anti-depressive facial expressions (AFE); and (4) a sham control condition. One week after diagnostic assessment, a single intervention of 90–120-minute duration will be administered, with a subsequent follow-up two weeks later. Depressed mood will serve as primary outcome. Secondary outcomes will include current positive mood, symptoms of depression, current suicidality, dysfunctional attitudes, automatic thoughts, emotional state, kinesthesia (i.e., facial expression, facial muscle activity, body posture), psychophysiological measures (e.g., heart rate (variability), respiration rate (variability), verbal acoustics), as well as feasibility measures (i.e., treatment integrity, compliance, usability, acceptability). Outcomes will be analyzed with multiple methods, such as hierarchical and conventional linear models and machine learning.
Discussion
If shown to be feasible and effective, the inclusion of kinesthesia into both psychotherapeutic diagnostics and interventions may be a pivotal step towards the more prompt, efficient, and targeted treatment of individuals with depression.
Trial registration
The study was preregistered in the Open Science Framework on August 12, 2022 (https://osf.io/mswfg/) and retrospectively registered in the German Clinical Trials Register on November 25, 2024. Clinical Trial Number: DRKS00035577.
... [40][41][42] Therefore, postural manipulation can positively affect mood and energy and improve arousal levels. 41,43 The results of the present study likewise suggest that postural manipulation through cervical traction may affect the maintenance of arousal levels. ...
Objective
This study aimed to determine the effect of postural support workstation on inducing effective brain activity during rest.
Methods
Thirty-five healthy digital overusers were recruited as participants. We conducted two interventions of head weight support traction (ST) and conventional traction (CT) strength on all participants in random order. Participants’ arousal levels and psychological comfort were assessed. In addition, changes in brain activity caused by traction were confirmed by measuring changes in resting state brain activity using an electroencephalogram (EEG).
Results
Under the ST condition, psychological comfort improved while alert levels were maintained. In addition the resting brain activity of EEG was characterized by strong focused attention and relaxed activity, as evidenced by increased alpha waves throughout the brain. By contrast, in the CT condition, no significant improvement in comfort was observed. Furthermore, high-frequency brain activity, such as beta 3 and gamma waves, was observed across the entire brain regions.
Conclusion
In this study, the ST workstation was shown to effectively improve resting attention and psychological comfort in individuals who excessively use digital devices by inducing resting state alpha activity without stimulating high-frequency brain waves, while maintaining an upright posture with appropriate traction.
... Findings confirming this dynamic interaction come from a variety of research areas, including gestures, eye movements and the expression of emotions (Ianì et al., 2018;Johansson & Johansson, 2014;Wilkes et al., 2017). Recently, similar effects have been observed in tasks involving memory of simple objects. ...
This article aims to show how many cognitive constructs within cognitive science are easily subject to a form of “reification,” which is the (often implicit) belief that cognitive functions are “things” and, therefore, unitary, inherently enduring, and isolable both from their environmental conditions and from other cognitive functions. After introducing the notion of reification and its relevance to cognitive science, I will discuss how the reification process leads to cognition being seen as isolated from its environment and internally characterized by hyperspecialization (reification in cognitive science). Second, the article highlights that this phenomenon has a cognitive-linguistic origin and that it strongly depends on the linguistic forms we use to describe cognitive functioning: different verbal labels lead to the belief that different substances exist (reification explained by cognitive science). Last, I will show how some recent theoretical approaches and experimental discoveries suggest instead that the verbal labels we use to describe cognitive functioning (and some resulting dichotomies) in fact conceal processes that are extremely interconnected, interdependent, and integrated. It will also be highlighted that some of these experimental data are considered “discoveries” precisely because the implicit starting points are characterized by overcategorization and decontextualization (or at least interpreted based on these assumptions).
... On one hand, downward and constrictive postures are related to: negative affect [20,21], feelings of helplessness [22], submission, and humility [23,24]. On the other hand, upward and expansive postures are related to: positive affect [20,25,26](_((((xxx, dominance or pride [27][28][29] see review [30](_((((xxx. Moreover, adopting a typical upward and expansive prayer posture (i.e., standing with hands raised and looking up) led to more positive affect and more parasympathetic activity, indexed through respiratory sinus arrhythmia, than a typical downward and constrictive prayer posture (i.e., standing with head down and prayer hands) [31]. ...
Most people practice a religion, often multiple times daily. Among the most visible aspects of these practices are body postures, which according to embodiment theories, likely shape the psychological experience of religion. In a preregistered study, we test this idea among Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in the United States, Turkey, and India (N = 2,458). In a repeated-measures experimental design, participants imagined praying in various typical postures, then reported their affective experiences, perceived relationship with deity, and prayer content for each posture. Compared to downward and constrictive postures, expansive and upward postures led to more positive emotions, dominance, and praise-focused prayers, yet fewer introspective or intercessory prayers. Interestingly, these effects varied based on religious context (e.g., many Hindus found upward and expansive postures offensive, causing no positive affect). We further explored whether these effects varied based on posture familiarity, religiosity, interoceptive sensibility, and personality traits. This research provides unique data on embodied processes shaping affect and cognition in religious practices.
... However, conducting such investigations in the wild poses significant challenges (Section 6.1). In addition, drawing to embodied cognition theories, our bodily actions can influence feelings positively or negatively [27,105,113,150,160]. Exploring how to leverage these impacts will benefit people's mental health. ...
Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) have been applied to assess, communicate, or regulate human core affect, emotions, or moods. Previous studies identified TUIs as an innovative way to serve people’s affective needs. This review examines the design and evaluation of tangible interactive systems that focus on human core affect, emotions, and moods. We provide an overview of current studies. We summarize how tangibility can be leveraged to support affective interaction, and we propose the dimensions of tangible affective interaction, deriving guidelines for design. We highlight three main challenges: understanding tangible affective interaction within real-life scenarios, utilizing embodied interaction to express or influence affective states, and establishing benchmarks for evaluating tangible affective interfaces.
... This may hinder or impede activation of concepts such as dominance or excitement, which may ultimately alter the effects of body displays on behavior and affect. Only a few studies have investigated the experimental effects of body manipulations in the context of psychopathology and findings have been mixed (Davis, Papini, Rosenfield et al., 2017;Flack, Laird & Cavallaro, 1999;Michalak, Chatinyan, Chourib & Teismann, 2018;Michalak, Mischnat & Teismann, 2014;Wilkes, Kydd, Sagar & Broadbent, 2017). Hence, it remains to be determined whether and how symptoms of psychopathology influence the effects of body displays on affect and behavior. ...
The present study investigated the effects of expansive and contractive body displays on adaptive behavior and affective outcomes. Addressing limitations in past research, the effects were investigated in two different contexts (i.e., fear context and sadness context), compared with two types of control conditions and the moderating effects of motivational traits and symptoms of psychopathology were accounted for. A sample of 186 adults completed a fear experiment involving a mock job interview and a sadness experiment involving sad mood induction. For each experiment, participants were randomly assigned to one of four body manipulations: (1) expansive; (2) contractive; (3) active control (i.e., running in place); or 4) passive control (i.e., doing nothing). The primary outcome was adaptive behavior (i.e., appropriate job‐interview behavior and positive recall bias). Secondary affective outcomes were emotions, action tendencies, and appraisals. Results revealed small, non‐significant effects of body displays on primary outcomes (ds = 0.19–0.28). For secondary outcomes, significant effects were identified for positive emotions (ds = 0.33). Across secondary outcomes, pairwise comparisons revealed that expansive displays led to more favorable outcomes than contractive displays. For participants with the highest levels of depression, body display conditions led to less favorable affective outcomes than control conditions. The results suggest that body displays do not influence adaptive behavior within the investigated contexts. When compared to contractive displays, expansive displays were found to yield more favorable affective changes. Lastly, the findings indicate that further investigations into body manipulations in the context of psychopathology are warranted.
... Then, it is possible to deduce that manipulation of bodily expressions could, in turn, influence mood. From a clinical perspective, this entails exploring whether individuals suffering from specific conditions like depression or other mood disorders, characterized by pessimistic thoughts and heightened recollection of negative experiences, could find relief through the manipulation of body posture and movements (see, for example, [71]). ...
Over the past twenty years, scientific research on body representations has grown significantly, with Body Memory (BM) emerging as a prominent area of interest in neurorehabilitation. Compared to other body representations, BM stands out as one of the most obscure due to the multifaceted nature of the concept of “memory” itself, which includes various aspects (such as implicit vs. explicit, conscious vs. unconscious). The concept of body memory originates from the field of phenomenology and has been developed by research groups studying embodied cognition. In this narrative review, we aim to present compelling evidence from recent studies that explore various definitions and explanatory models of BM. Additionally, we will provide a comprehensive overview of the empirical settings used to examine BM. The results can be categorized into two main areas: (i) how the body influences our memories, and (ii) how memories, in their broadest sense, could generate and/or influence metarepresentations—the ability to reflect on or make inferences about one’s own cognitive representations or those of others. We present studies that emphasize the significance of BM in experimental settings involving patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders, ultimately analyzing these findings from an ontogenic perspective.
... In the case of awkward posture, nurses exposed for more than 4 h showed 3.120 times compared to nurses exposed for less than 2 h. This aligns with studies showing that working in an awkward posture increases symptoms of overall fatigue [45,46]. Repetitive movements were 2.464 times higher in nurses exposed for 2-4 h than those exposed for less than 2 h. ...
Nurses face not only musculoskeletal disorders but also psychological health issues. The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors influencing overall fatigue, anxiety, and depression, respectively, by comprehensively considering work characteristics, exposure to hazards, and the presence of musculoskeletal pain. This study used binary logistic regression to analyze factors influencing fatigue, anxiety, and depression, respectively. The independent variables were occupation; age; work experience; healthcare organization; working hours per week; shift type; exposure time to physical, biochemical, and ergonomic hazards; and the presence of back, upper limb, or lower limb pain. The factors influencing overall fatigue were shift type (p = 0.007), exposure to vibration (p = 0.042), awkward posture (p = 0.001), repetitive motion (p = 0.017), and presence of back (p = 0.002) or upper (p < 0.001) limb pain. The factors influencing anxiety were age (p = 0.031), hours worked per week (p = 0.006), performing patient lifting/carrying (p = 0.041), and presence of upper (p = 0.022) or lower (p = 0.039) limb pain. In addition, the factors influencing depression were found to be hours worked per week (p = 0.042), exposure to infection (p = 0.005), and the presence of lower limb pain (p = 0.011). This study found that musculoskeletal pain has a significant impact on psychological health problems, suggesting that integrated management of musculoskeletal pain and psychological health problems may be effective in addressing health problems in the nursing profession.
... Much of the transformative impact of the exercise was ascribed by participants to the enactive processes of movement and embodiment. That the body can influence emotion and thinking has been demonstrated in the literature on embodied cognition [58,59]. The current findings bolster this view, emphasising the possible value in utilising the body to generate novel patterns of thought and feeling. ...
Compassion-focused chairwork has become a recent focus of empirical investigation. This study extended this area of research by exploring how participants with depression experienced the 'compassionate other' imagery exercise enacted via chairwork methods. Eight individuals from primary care NHS mental health services were interviewed about their experience of the practice. The resultant data were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). Three group experiential themes were identified: care that feels real, chairwork processes and encountering challenges on the road to discovery. The findings indicate that the intervention has therapeutic utility both as an intervention for cultivating compassion and as means of assessing for and identifying blocks to compassion. The results also suggest that there is potential value in enacting compassion-focused imagery techniques through chairwork methods, especially for those who have difficulty accessing mental imagery practices. The findings are contextualised within broader theory and literature, and clinical and research implications are discussed.
... Much of the transformative impact of the exercise was ascribed by participants to the enactive processes of movement and embodiment. That the body can influence emotion and thinking has been demonstrated in the literature on embodied cognition [58,59]. The current findings bolster this view, emphasising the possible value in utilising the body to generate novel patterns of thought and feeling. ...
Compassion-focused chairwork has become a recent focus of empirical investigation. This study extended this area of research by exploring how participants with depression experienced the ‘compassionate other’ imagery exercise enacted via chairwork methods. Eight individuals from primary care NHS mental health services were interviewed about their experience of the practice. The resultant data were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). Three group experiential themes were identified: care that feels real, chairwork processes and encountering challenges on the road to discovery. The findings indicate that the intervention has therapeutic utility both as an intervention for cultivating compassion and as means of assessing for and identifying blocks to compassion. The results also suggest that there is potential value in enacting compassion-focused imagery techniques through chairwork methods, especially for those who have difficulty accessing mental imagery practices. The findings are contextualised within broader theory and literature, and clinical and research implications are discussed.
... Bae et al. [6] stated that progressive muscle fatigue with activity and secondary pain may be factors that cause changes in spinal alignment. Additionally, it is also known that upright posture reduces fatigue and improves psychological symptoms in depressed patients [7]. Considering the high rates in PwMS of depression with a lifetime prevalence of ~50% and fatigue with a lifetime prevalence as high as 80%, postural alterations can also be expected in this patient group [8,9]. ...
Background/aim: Trunk control, which plays a key role in balance and mobility, decreases in patients with multiple sclerosis (PwMS)
and many parameters such as sensory, motor, and musculoskeletal systems affect trunk control. The aim of this study was to compare
trunk control, spinal mobility, and spinal posture in PwMS with healthy controls and investigate the relationship between trunk control
with spinal posture and spinal mobility in PwMS.
Materials and methods: The study was completed with 38 PwMS and 38 healthy controls with matched age and sex. Trunk control was
evaluated with the Trunk Impairment Scale (TIS). Spinal posture and mobility were evaluated in sagittal and frontal planes using an
IDIAG M360 Spinal Mouse. Spinal posture was evaluated in upright, maximum flexion, extension, left and right lateral flexion positions,
and spinal mobility was evaluated from upright to flexion, extension, right and left flexion positions in sagittal and frontal planes.
Results: TIS scores, thoracic mobility angles (from upright to flexion and left lateral flexion), lumbar mobility angles (from upright to
extension and right lateral flexion) and lumbar posture angle (maximum right lateral flexion) were lower, and thoracic posture angles
(upright and maximum extension) were higher in PwMS than healthy controls (p < 0.05). No significant difference was found between
other spinal postures and mobility values. In addition, there was only a negative relationship between thoracic spinal mobility from
upright to extension and trunk control in PwMS (r = –0.349; p = 0.032).
Conclusion: These findings indicate the importance of early detection of trunk disturbances in PwMS. Thus, even in the early stages of
multiple sclerosis, detailed trunk assessment will guide the implementation of comprehensive exercise programs.
... In this sense, motor and procedural information, albeit also potentially independent, can interact with declarative knowledge during encoding and retrieval in memory. Results consistent with this theoretical approach have come from a variety of research areas including eye movements, co-speech gestures, body posture, and bodily expression of emotion (Johansson & Johansson, 2014;Limata et al., 2023;Wilkes et al., 2017). These studies have shown that the body (its position in space and its movements) can play a nontrivial role in the retrieval of a memory trace. ...
In three experiments, we investigated explicit and implicit knowledge about the location of letters on the QWERTY keyboard in young students, and the mechanisms involved. Participants completed a verbal report task in which they were asked to locate the 21 letters of the Italian alphabet on a blank QWERTY keyboard (explicit memory). Subsequently, they carried out a motor production task, i.e., typing letters on a blank keyboard (implicit memory). Consistently with previous studies and several theories emphasizing the importance of implicit knowledge in typing, results showed that explicit knowledge about the QWERTY keyboard is systematically worse than procedural knowledge (Experiment 1). These two types of knowledge, however, are related. Second, we showed that explicit memory for letter position was affected when participants were engaged in a secondary task that required hands/arms movements. Specifically, loading participants' sensorimotor resources led to a decrease in explicit memory performance when the secondary task required hand/arm movements (hand/arms tapping) compared to when it required legs-feet movements (control condition). This result suggests that explicit knowledge is modulated by sensorimotor simulation (Experiment 2). Third, compared to a purely verbal response, pointing to the key on the keyboard did not improve explicit memory accuracy (Experiment 3). Taken together, the results indicate that sensorimotor simulation, and not just gestures, modulates the accessibility to explicit mental representations of verbal/spatial material, like letters on a keyboard.
... Adopting an upright posture was associated with improved self-esteem and mood in healthy individuals, while in people with mild to moderate depression the shift to an upright posture resulted in reduced negative affect and fatigue. In addition, the shoulder angle was associated with less negative affect and anxiety in groups that maintained a more upright posture, suggesting an important reduction in fatigue 22 . Depressed patients in curved posture remembered more negative than positive words, while patients in upright posture had a balanced memory of negative and positive words. ...
In the clinical practice of health professionals, it is observed that body posture can reveal the current emotional state. Emotional states can generate habitual gestures and postures that continue even after the emotion has ceased. The objective was to identify postural changes and variables found in the mood state in women. After project submission and approval to the CEP of the Lutheran University of Brazil (ULBRA), 15 women with a mean age of 39.6 years, regardless of color, race, or social class participated in the study. The sample was by convenience, being recruited through invitations on social networks. The research was carried out at the Walk Clinic of Exercise, in Charqueadas/RS. The instruments used were a sociodemographic and clinical questionnaire to characterize the sample, the Brunel Mood Scale (Brums), and the DIPA v13 (Digital Image based Postural Assessment) to assess posture. The results were presented in the form of descriptive statistics. It was found that increased tension and mental confusion for women with head changes in the sagittal plane and who also showed decreased vigor. In this study, it was verified that for women with low vigor, there is head alteration and that they present tension and mental confusion. More studies should be carried out with different methodologies in larger samples to enable the mapping and delineation of most postural changes related to emotional states and mood disorders, with due application in the clinical practice of health professionals.
... For example, one meta-analysis summarized 33 studies of gait and balance in depression [474]. Depressed individuals had worse and more slumped posture [397,395,475,393] and more postural instability and control [399]. In terms of gait, compared to healthy controls, those with depression took shorter strides, lifted their legs in an upward as opposed to a forward motion [391,390], had more body sway, and walked more slowly, possibly to maintain their balance [393,390,401,392]. ...
The emergence of artificial emotional intelligence technology is revolutionizing the fields of computers and robotics, allowing for a new level of communication and understanding of human behavior that was once thought impossible. While recent advancements in deep learning have transformed the field of computer vision, automated understanding of evoked or expressed emotions in visual media remains in its infancy. This foundering stems from the absence of a universally accepted definition of "emotion", coupled with the inherently subjective nature of emotions and their intricate nuances. In this article, we provide a comprehensive, multidisciplinary overview of the field of emotion analysis in visual media, drawing on insights from psychology, engineering, and the arts. We begin by exploring the psychological foundations of emotion and the computational principles that underpin the understanding of emotions from images and videos. We then review the latest research and systems within the field, accentuating the most promising approaches. We also discuss the current technological challenges and limitations of emotion analysis, underscoring the necessity for continued investigation and innovation. We contend that this represents a "Holy Grail" research problem in computing and delineate pivotal directions for future inquiry. Finally, we examine the ethical ramifications of emotion-understanding technologies and contemplate their potential societal impacts. Overall, this article endeavors to equip readers with a deeper understanding of the domain of emotion analysis in visual media and to inspire further research and development in this captivating and rapidly evolving field.
... This is because, according to the theory of embodied cognition, physiological changes in muscle tone, posture, movement, and facial expressions are linked to specific emotions and cognitions [11]. Research supports this theory, showing that sitting or walking with a slumped posture can cause negative affective states, lower feelings of power, and lower physiological arousal compared to upright posture [12][13][14][15]. Walking in a 'sad' style has also been shown to cause negative bias in processing emotion-related information [16]. ...
It is now common to see pedestrians looking at their mobile phones while they are walking. Looking at a mobile phone can cause stooped posture, slower gait, and lack of attention to surroundings. Because these walking characteristics have been associated with negative affect, walking while looking at a mobile phone may have negative effects on mood. This study aimed to investigate whether walking while looking at a mobile phone had psychological effects. One hundred and twenty-five adults were randomised to walk in a park either with or without reading text on a mobile phone. Participants wore a fitness tracker to record pace and heart rate, and posture was calculated from video. Self-reported mood, affect, feelings of power, comfort, and connectedness with nature were assessed. The phone group walked significantly slower, with a more stooped posture, slower heart rate, and felt less comfortable than the phone-free group. The phone group experienced significant decreases in positive mood, affect, power, and connectedness with nature, as well as increases in negative mood, whereas the phone-free group experienced the opposite. There was no significant mediation effect of posture on mood; however, feeling connected with nature significantly mediated the effects of phone walking on mood. In conclusion, individuals experience better wellbeing when they pay attention to the environment rather than their phone while walking. More research is needed to investigate the effects of performing other activities on a mobile phone on mood while walking and in other settings.
... The results coincide with the study by Nair et al. (2015), wherein a relationship between negative mood and low selfesteem has a statistically significant association with bad posture. In a similar study by Wilkes et al. (2017), the relationship between how posture improvement could reduce negative affect and fatigue. The study was done through respondents with mild to moderate depression. ...
... For example, one meta-analysis summarized 33 studies of gait and balance in depression [472]. Depressed individuals had worse and more slumped posture [395,393,473,391] and more postural instability and control [397]. In terms of gait, compared to healthy controls, those with depression took shorter strides, lifted their legs in an upward as opposed to a forward motion [389,388], had more body sway, and walked more slowly, possibly to maintain their balance [391,388,399,390]. ...
The emergence of artificial emotional intelligence technology is revolutionizing the fields of computers and robotics, allowing for a new level of communication and understanding of human behavior that was once thought impossible. Whereas recent advancements in deep learning have transformed the field of computer vision, automated understanding of evoked or expressed emotions in visual media remains in its infancy. This foundering stems from the absence of a universally accepted definition of “emotion,” coupled with the inherently subjective nature of emotions and their intricate nuances. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive, multidisciplinary overview of the field of emotion analysis in visual media, drawing on insights from psychology, engineering, and the arts. We begin by exploring the psychological foundations of emotion and the computational principles that underpin the understanding of emotions from images and videos.We then review the latest research and systems within the field, accentuating the most promising approaches. We also discuss the current technological challenges and limitations of emotion analysis, underscoring the necessity for continued investigation and innovation. We contend that this represents a “Holy Grail” research problem in computing and delineate pivotal directions for future inquiry. Finally, we examine the ethical ramifications of emotion-understanding technologies and contemplate their potential societal impacts. Overall, this article endeavors to equip readers with a deeper understanding of the domain of emotion analysis in visual media and to inspire further research and development in this captivating and rapidly evolving field.
... A comprehensive evaluation of research comparing central indicators in bipolar disorder to normal participants was undertaken (Rowland et al., 2018). A comprehensive research was conducted to see if altering posture while performing a demanding job may lessen detrimental impact and tiredness in persons having moderate or high depression symptoms (Wilkes et al., 2017). On the relationship between endosperm, melancholy, and suicide attempts, a meta -analysis was conducted and a narrative synthesis was created (Sarchiapone et al., 2018). ...
Machine learning based approaches for automatic disease prediction is a novel research area in healthcare informatics. Electronic Health Records in medical settings improves early-stage illness diagnosis. However, when standard rule-based approaches, like doctor's prescription or laboratory test reports are employed for disease diagnosis, the advantages of EHRs are not accomplished adequately. As a result, there is a requirement of technology based solution which helps in prediction of psychological diseases in a more efficient way. The proposed research work offers a hybrid Hopfield recurrent neural network (H2RN2) approach to predict psychological diseases by using amorphous clinical EHRs taken from Kaggle database. The proposed model automatically learns inherent semantic characteristics from available clinical data items. It uses fivefold cross validation technique within a recurrent neural network which detracts over fitting of the model. In addition to effective learning during training of the model, the hybrid approach also helps in accurate prediction of the disease with improved accuracy. The proposed model is assessed using three measuring parameters, accuracy, recall and F1-score and yields an accuracy of 97.53% in experimental evaluation, which is superior to several existing approaches for psychological disease prediction. The results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms several other techniques in predicting the risk of psychiatric disorders. In future, the similar approach may be employed to predict gender-based psychological diseases or to anticipate the risk of various physiological diseases.
... Mental illnesses and depression can somehow affect the body condition; a person suffering from depression feels weak and powerless due to low selfesteem [5]. A study found that more than 60% of patients with body abnormalities have experienced a period of major depressive disorder, about 35% had anxiety disorders, and 25% had mental disorders [6]. Canales et al. compared the effect of mild and severe depression on spinal alignment. ...
Purpose: Most studies have examined the effect of aerobic exercises on improving depression and performance. However, due to the importance of the relationship between corrective exercise and spine alignment, especially in depressed men, this study aimed to investigate the effect of a selected corrective program on the upper crossed syndrome in men with depression.
Methods: The present study was a randomized controlled trial conducted in Shahrekord City, Iran. To perform this research, 30 depressed people with the upper crossed syndrome were purposefully selected and divided into experimental and control groups. The Beck depression inventory was used to measure their depression. The amount of forward head and shoulder angles were determined by the photogrammetry method, and a flexible ruler was used to measure the dorsal curvature of the spine. After evaluating the variables in the pre-test, the experimental group received the selected corrective exercise program for 8 weeks, 3 days a week. During this period, the control group did not do any exercises. Finally, after executing the selected protocol, the mentioned variables were measured again in the post-test. In inferential statistics, an analysis of covariance was used to compare inter-group differences.
Results: After performing corrective exercises, the results showed a significant difference between the groups (P
... Although there are no direct replications of these studies, conceptual replications continue to support postural feedback effects. Indeed, an upright posture was found to increase confidence (Briñol et al. 2009), and positive affect (Wilkes et al. 2017), whereas a slumped posture was found to increase negative thoughts (Veenstra et al. 2017). ...
In addition to a set of beliefs, religion is fundamentally a corporeal practice. Across religions, specific postures adopted for prayer and worship may not simply reflect arbitrary customs but are closely intertwined with religious experience. This contribution reviews embodiment theory and related empirical evidence showing how body postures influence our emotions, thoughts, and decision-making. We propose a typology of postures adopted in religious practices along the dimensions of expansiveness-constrictiveness and upward-downward body orientation, and review the corpus of published/unpublished research on the embodiment of worship. We further discuss that in addition to enabling the experiential and ritualistic aspect of religion, embodiment serves at least four functions: communicative, social, cognitive, and intrapersonal. Finally, we suggest contextual and individual differences variables that may constrain the choice and psychological consequences of postures within and outside religious contexts. Together, we emphasize that the locus of religion’s psycho-social “effects” is not only in the mind or the brain but in the full body.
At sports games, idol performances, and movie screenings, some audiences move their bodies by waving their arms toward athletes, idols, or movie characters. What does this physical movement do to the audience? In this study, we investigated whether body movements affect the audience’s impression of an animated character. Participants watched animated clips of boxing matches, and waved a light stick when one character was attacking, but not when the other character was attacking. There were two ways of waving it: either forward or backward. Before and after watching the animated clips, participants rated the characters on strength, likability and attractiveness. The results showed that the increase in strength ratings was higher when participants waved forward than waved backward or no waving. These results suggest that physical movements that involve physical proximity to a specific object or character, such as forward waving, positively influence participants’ impressions of characters, athletes, and idols.
The significance of human posture extends beyond mere body stance to its profound impact on long-term physical well-being. Guided by the Roy adaptation model and Walker and Avant’s approach, in this paper the author presents a concept analysis of posture, which resulted in a proposed explanatory theory of postural functional status. By identifying attributes of posture (alignment, adaptation, and awareness), its antecedents (body parts, force of gravity, and musculoskeletal system), and consequences, this concept analysis offers fresh ideas to promote and shape postural future in nursing, wellness, and public health, with an aim to sustain the quality-of-life for individuals of all ages.
Recognizing excavator operators' sitting activities is crucial for improving their health, safety, and productivity. Moreover, it provides essential information for comprehending operators' behavior patterns and their interaction with construction equipment. However, limited research has been conducted on recognizing excavator operators' sitting activities. This paper presents a method for recognizing excavator operators' sitting activities by leveraging multi-sensor data and employing machine learning and deep learning algorithms. A multi-sensor system integrating interface pressure sensor arrays and inertial measurement units was developed to capture excavator operators' sitting activity information at a real construction site. Results suggest that the gated recurrent unit achieved outstanding performance, with 98.50% accuracy for static sitting postures and 94.25% accuracy for compound sitting actions. Moreover, several multi-sensor combination schemes were proposed to strike a balance between practicability and recognition accuracy. These findings demonstrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed approach for recognizing operators' sitting activities on construction sites.
Most past research on positive affect and emotion has focused exclusively on high-arousal positive affect (HAPA: e.g., excited), however, low-arousal positive affect (LAPA: e.g., calm) increasingly is included in emotion research. As such, there is a need to synthesize knowledge about the similarities and differences between LAPA and HAPA, the operationalization of LAPA and HAPA, and the distinct characteristics and importance of LAPA within emotional life. A systematic search identified 226 research papers comparing LAPA with HAPA from a broad spectrum of research topics; this review provides a narrative summary of their findings. Indications of differences between LAPA and HAPA were found in 89% of comparisons, with LAPA having a consistently distinguishable relationship to variables such as brain activity, cardiovascular health, decision-making, memory, mindfulness, personality, and solitude, among others. Other notable aspects of LAPA were found, including its role in stress, work, positive sociality, and well-being, as well as its importance in older adults and women. An analysis of items used to measure LAPA and HAPA revealed nuanced differences in conceptualizations, as well as emerging consensus around specific item usage. While considering item use in light of approach-avoidance motivation, we identified three possible LAPA subtypes: calm (a steady state of neither approach nor avoidance), satisfaction (having successfully approached), and relief (having successfully avoided). This review clarifies LAPA’s role in affective life, underscoring that LAPA’s differences from HAPA should be considered in research involving positive affect.
La conexión entre el cuerpo y la mente es algo que el conocimiento científico actual no ha logrado comprender completamente y surge la necesidad de adoptar un nuevo enfoque en esta relación para abordar desafíos médicos, especialmente enfermedades físicas o mentales que carecen de soluciones efectivas con la medicina convencional debido a efectos secundarios o resistencia al tratamiento. La importancia de estar abierto a nuevas perspectivas, considerando que las intervenciones mente-cuerpo han sido investigadas durante miles de años es un aspecto crucial. Estas intervenciones, como ejercicios, meditaciones, técnicas de respiración y prácticas de conciencia, están siendo redescubiertas y demuestran cómo el cuerpo afecta a la mente y viceversa, mejorando el estado general de una persona y su calidad de vida, así como aliviando síntomas que anteriormente solo podían tratarse con medicamentos, muchas veces con efectos secundarios dañinos o no tolerados. Se mencionan aspectos como la conciencia, la regulación emocional, el estado corporal, el lenguaje, el sistema inmunológico y la nutrición como componentes que describen el estado de una persona en un momento dado de su vida. El texto concluye enfatizando la necesidad de realizar más investigaciones para obtener nueva información y soluciones que mejoren la calidad de vida humana y amplíen los límites del conocimiento. E idealmente, se promueve un enfoque holístico y multidisciplinario para abordar desafíos médicos y mejorar la salud y el bienestar de las personas.
Denge sorunları son zamanlarda Fibromiyalji (FMS)’li hastalarda dikkat çeken semptomlar arasında gösterilmiştir. Bu çalışmada fibromiyalji hastalarında denge ve postürün değerlendirilmesini, bu durumların varlığı ile fibromiyalji şiddeti arasındaki ilişkiyi değerlendirme amaçlanmıştır. Çalışmaya TÜTF Hastanesi Fizik Tedavi ve Rehabilitasyon polikliniğine başvuran FMS tanılı 30-55 yaş aralığındaki 45 birey ve kontrol grubu olarak 44 birey dahil edildi. Olguların sosyo-demografik özellikleri, şikâyet ve tanı süresi kaydedildi. Vizüel analog skala (VAS) ile ağrı şiddeti, Fonksiyonel durum için Fibromiyalji Etki Skalası (FEA), Fibromiyalji Semptom Şiddet Skalası, Yaygın Ağrı İndeksi sorgulanarak kaydedildi. Olguların dinamik dengeleri Berg denge testi, statik dengeleri ise tek bacak üstünde durma testi ile değerlendirildi. Zebris CMS-20P-2 cihazı ile bilgisayar ortamında üç boyutlu ultrasonik sistem ile omurga postür analizi yapıldı. FMS grubunda sağ ve sol tek ayak üzerinde durma süreleri ile toplam Berg Denge Ölçeği sonuçlarının anlamlı derecede daha düşük bulunmuştur. Berg Denge Skoru ile Toplam FEA skoru, Semptom Şiddet Skalası skoru A, Fibromiyalji Şiddet skoru ve Total Gövde İnklinasyon Açısı arasında ters yönde ve orta düzeyde anlamlı ilişki olduğu bulduk. Omurga postür analizi ile hasta ve kontrol grupları arasındaki postür analizi sonuçlarının farklı saptanmamıştır. Sonuç olarak FMS’li hastalarda denge bozukluğunun sağlıklı bireylere göre daha sık rastlandığını tespit ettik. Postür analizinde her iki grup arasında anlamlı fark saptayamadık. Özellikle postür srunlarını ortaya koyabilmek için büyük popülasyonlu çalışmalara ihtiyaç vardır.
In diagnostic, therapeutic, and nursing contexts, touch is a prerequisite for successful treatment. Compared to other everyday touches, these touches represent exceptional situations in the lives of both patients and the professionals performing the touches.
Social touches can be distinguished from necessary touches that serve a medical or nursing purpose. These social touches, which often occur spontaneously, fulfill social or emotional functions and can have a calming, comforting, or stress-reducing effect. It is possible to use social touches specifically for these effects in medical and nursing contexts.
The chapter informs about emotional, social, and ethical aspects of touch, placebo effects through touch, embodiment effects, effects of pets and animal-assisted therapy, and the effects of loneliness and touch deprivation on health.
A 2-year-old female eclectus parrot (Eclectus roratus) was presented for suspected cervical myopathy due to trauma. Severe ventroflexion of the cervical spine and mental depression were identified during the physical examination. The bird was responsive to stimuli but otherwise quiet. Plasma biochemistry results were suggestive of a myopathy, based on marked elevations of both aspartate transaminase (25 652 U/L) and creatine kinase (253 240 U/L). Whole-body radiographic images were unremarkable. Treatment was initiated with supportive therapy for presumptive shock, dehydration, pain, myopathy, and possible spinal swelling. Allopathic therapy included subcutaneous fluids; vitamins A, D, and E; dexamethasone sodium phosphate; hydromorphone; and gavage feeding to treat the acute inflammatory process and provide nutritional support during healing. Supportive care through the Integrative Medicine Department (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA) was also performed on the patient. Photobiomodulation, acupuncture, Tui-na massage, and rehabilitation exercises were instituted to provide adjunct treatment for relieving pain, promoting muscle healing, improving patient demeanor, and improving cervical mobility. Integrative therapies were well tolerated by the patient, with no sedation required. By day 3, mentation had subjectively improved by 50% despite the persistent cervical ventroflexion. By day 8, the elevated serum enzyme activities had decreased, the patient could eat and drink on its own, and it could readily step up and seek attention during handling. The bird was able to lift its head and could hold it at approximately 50% of normal posture. Integrative therapies were continued throughout hospitalization. The bird was released from the hospital 20 days after initial intake, with head carriage in approximately 80% of the expected normal position and no apparent cervical pain based on palpation. This case demonstrates the benefits of integrative therapies as an adjunct treatment for cervical pain and myopathy in a psittacine species.
Theories of mental functioning have suggested its metaphoric basis. Drawing from theories of this type as well as from recent extensions of such theories to the personality processing realm, participants in three studies (total N = 452) were asked to indicate their relative preferences for the spatial concepts of up versus down, given that verticality metaphors are frequently used to conceptualize states related to emotion and well-being. Up-preferring individuals were more extraverted and approach-motivated (Study 1), whereas down-preferring individuals were more depressed (Studies 1 and 2). Higher levels of vertical preference were also predictive of affective well-being in a daily diary protocol (Study 3) and these relationships operated in both between-person and within-person terms. Metaphors, which liken the intangible to the tangible, may play a significant role in shaping experience and verticality metaphors, in particular, appear to provide insights into the processes that that support happiness versus its absence.
“Body” is an important element in the practice of mindfulness. However, the role of the body in theory and mechanism of action in mindfulness has been actively discussed only in the last decade. In this paper, we reviewed the role of the body in mindfulness from clinical and theoretical perspectives, based on “embodiment”. First, in the clinical perspective, based on mindfulness-based intervention (MBI), we examined the implication of “body awareness” through findings of the interaction between emotion and cognition; subjective body experience, in particular; depression and alexithymia. We then excavated “noticing emotions through the body” as a premise of the interventions. Second, the theoretical backgrounds of each MBI were organized into the Kabat-Zinn’s concept of “wholeness,” Varela’s Enactivism, Gallagher’s theory of self-consciousness, the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems and Predictive Coding Theory, and then were related to Bergson’s cone diagram on the perspective timescales, proposing some future integration strategy about “wholeness” as continuum, as an attempt. Finally, based on these perspectives, we derived new implications for embodiment-based mindfulness practice and theoretical assumption: embodied awareness through “wholeness” can lead us decentering (far into “non-self”) only in the context of the ‘as-it-is’ attitude.
Functional scoliosis is defined as the reversible and temporary lateral spinal curvature that mainly occurs due to abnormal postural habits that leads to non-structural and compensatory changes in spine. Functional scoliosis can lead to the development of mental health issues, such as stress, anxiety and depression. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of spinal manipulation techniques and Schroth exercises on psychological parameters in patients with functional scoliosis. The subjects were randomly allocated into experimental (n=31) and control group (n=31). Spinal manipulation techniques and Schroth exercises were given to the patients of experimental group, while only Schroth exercises were given to the patients of control group. Outcome measures were Depression, Anxiety & Stress Score that was examined by using ‘DASS-21 questionnaire’. Treatment was given for four weeks, thrice weekly. After the completion of four weeks, DASS scores were obtained from the participants. Patients were followed up after 2 months and data was collected again. Repeated measures ANOVA were used to compare the mean changes within-group. Independent t-test was used to analyse the mean improvement between-group. Results suggested that there was a statistically significant difference between pre-/post and pre-/follow-up scores of the DASS, but there was statistical non-significant difference between post-/follow-up scores of the DASS. Results also suggested that experimental group showed better improvement compared to the control group. This study concluded that the combine use of spinal manipulation techniques and Schroth exercise protocol can significantly reduce the psychosomatic symptoms in functional scoliosis.
Clinical Trial Registry of India: CTRI/2020/02/023221
Traditional social cognitive and cognitive-clinical perspectives have assumed that thinking (or cognition) and information processing play key causal roles in emotional and clinical disorders. Misappraisals and faulty attributions, assumptions and beliefs, and cognitive activity such as rumination and worry, are the focus of clinical interventions. However, in recent decades it has become increasingly recognized that the links between cognition and bodily states are mutual and reciprocal. That is, it is not just that an individual’s cognition influences body states and emotion, but the individual’s body states and emotions can also influence their cognitive processes in return. The links between cognition, emotion, and bodily states are fundamentally bidirectional and complex and it may be important to consider the impact of emotion and bodily states in cognitive changes. Thus, strategies from embodied or body-oriented approaches may help to augment CBT strategies to produce better treatment outcomes. The rapidly growing literature on embodiment science today has the intriguing potential to afford new insights for understanding and strategies for treating clinical disorders.
Background
Psychomotor retardation has long been recognized as a major feature of depression, and anxiety disorders have been linked with freeze and flight motor responses. This review and meta-analysis aimed a) to synthesize available evidence of motor differences in individuals with depression and anxiety disorders compared to healthy individuals and b) to evaluate the effect of experimental manipulations of motor displays within these clinical groups.
Method
The databases PubMed and PsycINFO were searched for studies either assessing motor differences between clinical and healthy control groups or manipulating the motor system within a clinical group.
Results
The literature search yielded 87 relevant papers, comprising 82 studies comparing a clinical group to a healthy group and 5 studies investigating motor manipulations within a clinical sample. The results of the meta-analysis (K = 71) indicated a statistically significant combined estimate of differences between healthy and clinical groups (g = 0.38 [0.31, 0.45], adjusted for publication bias g = 0.26 [0.19, 0.33]) of a small size. This effect did not vary according to type of disorder (anxiety vs. depression, p = .468). From a narrative review of experimental studies within clinical groups, four out of five studies reported significant effects of manipulating the motor system on affective outcomes.
Discussion
This synthesis adds to the accumulating empirical evidence on motor alterations in depression and anxiety disorders. Future research will need to investigate how individuals sufferings from depression or anxiety could benefit from psychological, behavioral, and physical interventions directly aimed at the motor system.
Background
The modulation hypothesis of facial feedback has not adequately examined how combining facial expressions and bodily postures might influence our experience of emotional stimuli. This pilot study examined a new method for manipulating both face and body together, which is important in furthering our understanding of how face and body interact to influence emotional experiences in the real world.
Methods
Using a within-subjects design, 30 participants viewed positive film clips under four conditions: (1) positive face with positive body (PP), (2) positive face with neutral body (PN), (3) neutral face with positive body (NP) and (4) neutral face with neutral body (NN). Measures of positive and negative affect were taken before and after each clip, to assess the subjective emotional experience.
Results
Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine differences in the emotional experience under each condition. Post hoc pairwise comparisons demonstrated that positive affect in the PP condition was significantly higher than in the NP and NN conditions. There was no significant difference between the PP and NN conditions.
Conclusion
Whilst the study findings are difficult to interpret, this pilot study generated a number of important methodological learnings that are relevant to future research of this kind.
This article reports 2 experiments that test whether both emotional and nonemotional feelings may be influenced by uninterpreted proprioceptive input. The logic of the procedure was adopted from studies by F. Strack, L. Martin, and S. Stepper (1988), who unobtrusively manipulated people's facial expressions. In the 1st experiment, a functionally equivalent technique was used to vary the posture of the body. Study 1 results revealed that success at an achievement task led to greater feelings of pride if the outcome was received in an upright position rather than in a slumped posture. Study 2 results revealed that nonemotional feelings of effort were influenced by contraction of the forehead muscle (corrugator), and Ss' self-ratings on a trait dimension reflected this experience when the facial contraction was maintained during the recall of behavioral episodes exemplifying this trait. To account for these results, a framework is proposed that draws on a distinction between noetic and experiential representations.
A sample of 60 first-year psychology students judged the emotional state of 21 drawn figures and completed the Adjective Checklist and a mood questionnaire. The judgements were affected by the interaction between head position and spinal position of the figure. Each figure was associated with a unique pattern of emotions, and the judgements given were not influenced by the subjects’ own emotional state.
Introduction: Erect and slouch body postures affect access to positive and negative emotions. In an erect sitting posture participants reported more positive emotion and thoughts, while in a slouch position they reported more negative emotion and thoughts. This study explored the electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns under erect and slouch body postures while recalling positive and negative events. Methods: Twenty-eight healthy college students were instructed to sit quietly with their eyes closed for 1 min, and then to sit in erect or slouch postures while recalling happy or depressive events for 1 min each. EEG, with linked-ear references, was recorded at Cz and analyzed under five conditions. Results: There were significantly higher amplitudes of beta2, beta3, and beta4 in a slouch posture while recalling happy events than in an erect posture while recalling happy or depressive events. There was no significant difference between body posture and emotional recall on low-frequency oscillatory activity. The reaction time was significantly longer to access positive event in the slouched position as compared to the erect position. Conclusion: Evoking positive thoughts in a slouch body position takes more effort or arousal than other positions as indicated by the significant increase in high-frequency oscillatory activities. The implication for cognitive behavior therapy is that body posture matters; clients have more difficulty shifting to evoking a positive emotional state when sitting in a collapsed position than when sitting in an erect position.
Journal of Sport Behavior. 2010;33(4):355-376. The purpose of this research was to describe psychometric issues relevant to use of the Profile of Mood States (POMS), to provide indices of POMS reliability and validity, and to contrast the reliability characteristics of the POMS and various short-forms of the POMS. A brief description of the short forms of the POMS is presented and it seems that these short forms have merit. Evaluation of the factor structure of the full-scale POMS relative to the EDITS 30-item version of the POMS (EPOMS) using principal components exploratory factor analysis and maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analyses suggests that the EPOMS is, psychometrically, the superior instrument. Support was found for five of six POMS subscales (Tension, Depression, Anger, Vigor, Fatigue, but not Confusion). Confirmatory factor analysis of the POMS did not result in confirmation of the theoretical six-factor model. Principal components factor analyses as well as confirmatory factor analyses of the six-factor model provide strong support for the factorial integrity of the EPOMS.
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, “Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies,” revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender studies; some offer overviews of well-known methodologies and demonstrate their applicability within transgender studies; some suggest how transgender issues play out in various fields; and some map the productive tensions between trans studies and other interdisciplines.
Objective:
The hypothesis that muscular states are related to emotions has been supported predominantly by research on facial expressions. However, body posture also may be important to the initiation and modulation of emotions. This experiment aimed to investigate whether an upright seated posture could influence affective and cardiovascular responses to a psychological stress task, relative to a slumped seated posture.
Method:
There were 74 participants who were randomly assigned to either a slumped or upright seated posture. Their backs were strapped with physiotherapy tape to hold this posture throughout the study. Participants were told a cover story to reduce expectation effects of posture. Participants completed a reading task, the Trier Social Stress speech task, assessments of mood, self-esteem, and perceived threat. Blood pressure and heart rate were continuously measured.
Results:
Upright participants reported higher self-esteem, more arousal, better mood, and lower fear, compared to slumped participants. Linguistic analysis showed slumped participants used more negative emotion words, first-person singular pronouns, affective process words, sadness words, and fewer positive emotion words and total words during the speech. Upright participants had higher pulse pressure during and after the stressor.
Conclusions:
Adopting an upright seated posture in the face of stress can maintain self-esteem, reduce negative mood, and increase positive mood compared to a slumped posture. Furthermore, sitting upright increases rate of speech and reduces self-focus. Sitting upright may be a simple behavioral strategy to help build resilience to stress. The research is consistent with embodied cognition theories that muscular and autonomic states influence emotional responding.
Basic research has shown that the motoric system (i.e., motor actions or stable postures) can strongly affect emotional processes. The present study sought to investigate the effects of sitting posture on the tendency of depressed individuals to recall a higher proportion of negative self-referent material. Thirty currently depressed inpatients either sat in a slumped (depressed) or in an upright (non-depressed) posture while imagining a visual scene of themselves in connection with positive or depression related words presented to them on a computer screen. An incidental recall test of these words was conducted after a distraction task. Results of a mixed ANOVA showed a significant posture x word type interaction, with upright-sitting patients showing unbiased recall of positive and negative words but slumped patients showing recall biased towards more negative words. The findings indicate that relatively minor changes in the motoric system can affect one of the best-documented cognitive biases in depression. Practical implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Features of patients' motoric system (i.e., habitual movement patterns or body postures) might be relevant for individual case conceptualization. Training patients to change habitual motoric patterns (e.g., dysfunctional posture or movement patterns) might attenuate negatively biased information processing in depressed patients. Training patients in mindful body awareness might be useful because it fosters an intuitive understanding of the interplay of bodily and emotional processes.
Body image concern has long been linked with unhealthy restrained eating patterns among women, yet scant research has examined factors to disrupt this process. At the same time, feminine stereotypes prescribe that women should be small, restrict their movements, speak softly, and limit their food intake (e.g., through dieting). Here, we examined whether women’s postural constriction or expansion moderated the relation between body shape concern and restrained eating, predicting that expansive postures would interrupt this robust relation. As a secondary aim, we investigated whether women spontaneously adopted constrictive postures and to what extent postures contributed to restrained eating under baseline conditions. Specifically, women’s postural position (constricted, expanded, or baseline posture) was manipulated and restrained eating was measured. Results showed that at high levels of body shape concern, women sitting in expansive postures restrained their eating less compared to women in constrictive postures. Further, spontaneously expansive (vs. spontaneously constrictive) postures were associated with less restrained eating among women. Thus, postural expansion attenuated the link between body shape concern and restrained eating whereas postural constriction exacerbated the link. Implications for gender performativity and possible interventions for restrained eating are discussed.
The EEG spectral-coherence parameters were analyzed in 10 healthy individuals (mean age, 22 ± 0.67 years) at different steps of verticalization, from the lying position to the sitting and standing positions. The maximal changes in all EEG parameters were revealed when the upright posture was maintained in the absence of visual control. Under these conditions, a power increase for the fast EEG components (the β- and γ-bands) was observed, as was an additional increase when the conditions of maintaining the upright posture were complicated. According to the results of the EEG’s coherent analysis, human verticalization revealed a specific increase for most of the EEG rhythm ranges in the right hemisphere, especially in the frontocentral and occipitoparietal regions, as well as for the interhemispheric coherences for these leads reflecting the involvement of both cortical and subcortical structures in these processes. When the posture maintenance conditions were complicated, an additional coherence increase in the fast EEG bands (the β-rhythm) was observed in the frontal cortical regions, which was evidence of the increase in the executive functions under these conditions.
Essays written by currently-depressed, formerly-depressed, and never-depressed college students were examined for differences in language that might shed light on the cognitive operations associated with depression and depression-vulnerability. A text analysis program computed the incidence of words in predesignated categories. Consistent with Beck's cognitive model and with Pyczsinski and Greenberg's self-focus model of depression, depressed participants used more negatively valenced words and used the word, "I" more than did never-depressed participants. Formerly-depressed (presumably depression-vulnerable) participants did not differ from never-depressed participants on these indices of depressive processing. However, consistent with prediction, formerly-depressed participants' use of the word "I" increased across the essays and was significantly greater than that of never-depressed writers in the final portion of the essays.
Reports 2 experiments that test whether both emotional and nonemotional feelings may be influenced by uninterpreted proprioceptive input. The logic of the procedure was adopted from studies by F. Strack et al (1988), who unobtrusively manipulated people's facial expressions. In the 1st experiment, a functionally equivalent technique was used to vary the posture of the body. Study 1 results revealed that success at an achievement task led to greater feelings of pride if the outcome was received in an upright position rather than in a slumped posture. Study 2 results revealed that nonemotional feelings of effort were influenced by contraction of the forehead muscle (corrugator), and Ss' self-ratings on a trait dimension reflected this experience when the facial contraction was maintained during the recall of behavioral episodes exemplifying this trait. To account for these results, a framework is proposed that draws on a distinction between noetic and experiential representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Language is the currency of most human social processes. We use words to convey our emotions and thoughts, to tell stories, and to understand the world. It is somewhat odd, then, that so few investigations in the social sciences actually focus on natural language use among people in the real world. There are many legitimate reasons for not studying what people say or write. Historically, the analysis of text was slow, complex, and costly. The purpose of this chapter is to suggest that social scientists in general and social psychologists in particular should reconsider the value of language studies. With recent advances in computer text analysis methods, we are now able to explore basic social processes in new and rich ways that could not have been done even a decade ago. When language has been studied at all within social psychology, it has usually relied on fairly rigorous experimental methods using an assortment of standardized human coding procedures. These works are helping researchers to understand social attribution (Fiedler & Semin, 1992), intercultural communication (Hajek & Giles, 2003), and even how different cultures think about time (Boroditsky, 2001).
Three experiments with 147 undergraduates tested the hypothesis that slumped (depressed) or upright physical postures are not just passive indicators of mental states but can reciprocally affect the mental states and behavior of an individual. By using a methodology similar to that in many facial manipulation studies, the experimenters changed Ss' postures in a standard learned helplessness setting. Results indicate that when a slumped posture was "inappropriate" to the current situation (an S had just succeeded), the slumping seemed to undermine subsequent motivation as well as feelings of control. But when "appropriate" (an S had experienced failure or helplessness), slumping minimized both feelings of helplessness and depression and motivation deficits. A new theoretical analysis—the appropriateness hypothesis—is therefore proposed: A slumped vs upright posture orientation can guide and moderate information-processing and responses to positive and negative mood-relevant stimuli. Implications regarding self-regulatory processes that may operate in emotion, depression, and learned helplessness are discussed. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In the study reported here, we investigated whether covertly manipulating positive facial expressions would influence cardiovascular and affective responses to stress. Participants (N = 170) naive to the purpose of the study completed two different stressful tasks while holding chopsticks in their mouths in a manner that produced a Duchenne smile, a standard smile, or a neutral expression. Awareness was manipulated by explicitly asking half of all participants in the smiling groups to smile (and giving the other half no instructions related to smiling). Findings revealed that all smiling participants, regardless of whether they were aware of smiling, had lower heart rates during stress recovery than the neutral group did, with a slight advantage for those with Duchenne smiles. Participants in the smiling groups who were not explicitly asked to smile reported less of a decrease in positive affect during a stressful task than did the neutral group. These findings show that there are both physiological and psychological benefits from maintaining positive facial expressions during stress.
Building on the notion of embodied attitudes, we examined how body postures can influence self-evaluations by affecting thought confidence, a meta-cognitive process. Specifically, participants were asked to think about and write down their best or worse qualities while they were sitting down with their back erect and pushing their chest out (confident posture) or slouched forward with their back curved (doubtful posture). Then, participants completed a number of measures and reported their self-evaluations. In line with the self-validation hypothesis, we predicted and found that the effect of the direction of thoughts (positive/negative) on self-related attitudes was significantly greater when participants wrote their thoughts in the confident than in the doubtful posture. These postures did not influence the number or quality of thoughts listed, but did have an impact on the confidence with which people held their thoughts. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This review evaluates four facial feedback hypotheses, each proposing a certain relation between the face and emotions. It addresses criticisms of the data, considers implications for emotional and social processes, and advises directions for future research. The current data support the following: Facial actions are sensitive to social context, yet correspond to the affective dimension of emotions; matches with specific emotions are unlikely. They modulate ongoing emotions, and initiate them. These two claims have received substantially improved support, in part due to studies controlling for effects of experimental demand and task difficulty. Facial action may influence the occurrence of specific emotions, not simply their valence and intensity. Facial action is not necessary for emotions. There are multiple and nonmutually exclusive plausible mechanisms for facial effects on emotions. Future work must focus on determining the relative contributions of these mechanisms, and the parameters of their effects on emotions.
Four studies were conducted in a laboratory setting to examine whether variations in physical posture can have a regulatory or feedback role affecting motivation and emotion. The results of the first study, which were replicated in the second study, revealed that subjects who had been temporarily placed in a slumped, depressed physical posture later appeared to develop helplessness more readily, as assessed by their lack of persistence in a standard learned helplessness task, than did subjects who had been placed in an expansive, upright posture; surprisingly, there were no differences in verbal reports. The third study established that physical posture was an important cue in observers'' verbal reports of depression in another person. The fourth study further explored the role of posture in self-reports of emotion using another posture. The results indicated that subjects who were placed in a hunched, threatened physical posture verbally reported self-perceptions of greater stress than subjects who were placed in a relaxed position. The findings of these studies are interpreted in terms of self-perception theory. It is suggested that physical postures of the body are one of several types of cues that can affect emotional experience and behavior.
In this study, we aimed to quantify posture and body image in patients with major depressive disorder during episodes and after drug treatment, comparing the results with those obtained for healthy volunteers.
Over a 10-week period, we evaluated 34 individuals with depression and 37 healthy volunteers. Posture was assessed based on digital photos of the subjects; CorelDRAW software guidelines and body landmarks were employed. Body image was evaluated using the Body Shape Questionnaire.
During depressive episodes (in comparison with the post-treatment period), patients showed increased head flexion (p<0.001), increased thoracic kyphosis (p<0.001), a trend toward left pelvic retroversion (p=0.012) and abduction of the left scapula (p=0.046). During remission, patient posture was similar to that of the controls. At week 1 (during the episode), there were significant differences between the patients and the controls in terms of head flexion (p<0.001) and thoracic kyphosis (p<0.001); at weeks 8-10 (after treatment), such differences were seen only for shoulder position. The mean score on the Body Shape Questionnaire was 90.03 during the depressive episode, compared with 75.82 during remission (p=0.012) and 62.57 for the controls.
During episodes of depression, individuals with major depressive disorder experience changes in posture and mild dissatisfaction with body image. The findings demonstrate that the negative impact of depression includes emotional and physical factors.
Humans and other animals express power through open, expansive postures, and they express powerlessness through closed, contractive postures. But can these postures actually cause power? The results of this study confirmed our prediction that posing in high-power nonverbal displays (as opposed to low-power nonverbal displays) would cause neuroendocrine and behavioral changes for both male and female participants: High-power posers experienced elevations in testosterone, decreases in cortisol, and increased feelings of power and tolerance for risk; low-power posers exhibited the opposite pattern. In short, posing in displays of power caused advantaged and adaptive psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes, and these findings suggest that embodiment extends beyond mere thinking and feeling, to physiology and subsequent behavioral choices. That a person can, by assuming two simple 1-min poses, embody power and instantly become more powerful has real-world, actionable implications.
We investigated the hypothesis that people's facial activity influences their affective responses. Two studies were designed to both eliminate methodological problems of earlier experiments and clarify theoretical ambiguities. This was achieved by having subjects hold a pen in their mouth in ways that either inhibited or facilitated the muscles typically associated with smiling without requiring subjects to pose in a smiling face. Study 1's results demonstrated the effectiveness of the procedure. Subjects reported more intense humor responses when cartoons were presented under facilitating conditions than under inhibiting conditions that precluded labeling of the facial expression in emotion categories. Study 2 served to further validate the methodology and to answer additional theoretical questions. The results replicated Study 1's findings and also showed that facial feedback operates on the affective but not on the cognitive component of the humor response. Finally, the results suggested that both inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms may have contributed to the observed affective responses.
In this article, we apply theory and research on self-focused attention and self-regulatory processes to the problem of depression and use this framework to integrate the roles played by a variety of psychological processes emphasized by other theories of the development and maintenance of depression. We propose that depression occurs after the loss of an important source of self-worth when an individual becomes stuck in a self-regulatory cycle in which no responses to reduce the discrepancy between actual and desired states are available. Consequently, the individual falls into a pattern of virtually constant self-focus, resulting in intensified negative affect, self-derogation, further negative outcomes, and a depressive self-focusing style in which he or she self-focuses a great deal after negative outcomes but very little after positive outcomes. Eventually, these factors lead to a negative self-image, which may take on value by providing an explanation for the individual's plight and by helping the individual avoid further disappointments. The depressive self-focusing style then maintains and exacerbates the depressive disorder. We review findings from laboratory studies of mild to moderately depressed people, correlational studies of more severely depressed people, and clinical observations with respect to consistency with the theory.
This paper describes a protocol for induction of moderate psychological stress in a laboratory setting and evaluates its effects on physiological responses. The 'Trier Social Stress Test' (TSST) mainly consists of an anticipation period (10 min) and a test period (10 min) in which the subjects have to deliver a free speech and perform mental arithmetic in front of an audience. In six independent studies this protocol has been found to induce considerable changes in the concentration of ACTH, cortisol (serum and saliva), GH, prolactin as well as significant increases in heart rate. As for salivary cortisol levels, the TSST reliably led to 2- to 4-fold elevations above baseline with similar peak cortisol concentrations. Studies are summarized in which TSST-induced cortisol increases elucidated some of the multiple variables contributing to the interindividual variation in adrenocortical stress responses. The results suggest that gender, genetics and nicotine consumption can influence the individual's stress responsiveness to psychological stress while personality traits showed no correlation with cortisol responses to TSST stimulation. From these data we conclude that the TSST can serve as a tool for psychobiological research.
In older adults, depression has been associated with increased fall risk, but the reasons for this link are not fully clear. Given parallels between major depression and Parkinson's disease, we hypothesized that major depression and related affective disorders would be associated with impairment in the ability to regulate the stride-to-stride fluctuations in gait cycle timing.
We measured stride-to-stride fluctuations of patients with two forms of mood disorders, unipolar major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder, and compared their gait to that of a healthy control group. The primary outcomes were two measures of gait unsteadiness that have been associated with fall risk: stride time variability and swing time variability.
Compared to the control group, the two patient groups tended to walk more slowly and with decreased swing time and increased stride time. However, none of these differences was statistically significant. Compared to the control group, swing time variability was significantly larger in the subjects with bipolar disorder (p < 0.0001) and in the subjects with MDD (p < 0.0004).
Patients with MDD and patients with bipolar disorder display gait unsteadiness. This perturbation in gait may provide a mechanistic link connecting depression and falls. The present findings also suggest the possibility that measurement of variability of gait may provide a readily quantifiable objective approach to monitoring depression and related affective disorders.
Large placebo effects are typically reported in clinical drug trials and evidence suggests placebo effects have increased over time. The diminishing drug-placebo difference calls into question the effectiveness of pharmacological treatments and provides a challenge to prove the effectiveness of new medications. This chapter discusses explanations for the increasing placebo effect. It highlights the contribution of spontaneous remission to the improvement in placebo groups, but focuses particularly on the role of patient and clinician expectations. Certain characteristics of the trial design can influence the formation of patient expectations and, subsequently, true placebo responses. Side effects in clinical trials may also contribute inadvertently to placebo responses. Side effects after starting medication can inform participants about their allocation to an active treatment group. Thus, they may enhance expectations of improvement and contribute to nonspecific effects in clinical trials. It is argued that specific and nonspecific effects interact in drug groups of clinical trials. This interaction influences drug-placebo differences in clinical trials (i.e., trial sensitivity). Future research should aim to identify which patients will respond best to drugs and those who may be better treated with placebos.
Feelings argues for the counter-intuitive idea that feelings do not cause behavior, but rather follow from behavior, and are, in fact, the way that we know about our own bodily states and behaviors. This point of view, often associated with William James, is called self-perception theory. Self-perception theory can be empirically tested by manipulating bodily states and behaviors in order to see if the corresponding feelings are produced. This volume presents hundreds of studies, all demonstrating that feelings do indeed follow from behavior. Behaviors that have been manipulated include facial expressions of emotion, autonomic arousal, actions, gaze, and postures. The feelings that have been induced include happiness, anger, fear, romantic love, liking, disliking, hunger, and feelings of familiarity. These feelings do not feel like knowledge because they are knowledge-by-acquaintance, such as the knowledge we have of how an apple tastes, rather than verbal, knowledge-by-description, such as the knowledge that apples are red, round, and edible. Many professional theories of human behavior, as well as common sense, explain actions by an appeal to feelings as causes. This book argues to the contrary that if feelings are information about behaviors that are already ongoing, feelings cannot be causes, and that the whole mechanistic model of human behavior as "caused" in this sense seems mistaken. It proposes an alternative, cybernetic model, involving hierarchically stacked control systems. In this model, feelings provide feedback to the control systems, and in a further elaboration, this model suggests that the stack of control systems matches a similar stack of levels of organization of the world.
One of the most critical risk factors contributing to injury of the low back is posture, specifically of the torso. Though considerable time and expense is directed towards training workers to use postures which minimize biomechanical stress, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that this training may not be effective over shifts of extended duration. This may be due to a combination of fatigue and loss of concentration. Ten healthy subjects who had been previously trained in proper lifting technique lifted a load of 120% of their maximum acceptable weight of lift (MAWL) at a frequency of three lifts per minute for two hours or until they were no longer able to continue due to fatigue, whichever came first. Subjects' self-selected postures were quantified in terms of maximum torso flexion and the distance between the hands and the L4/L5 spinal disc. Changes in posture were evaluated as a function of time, heart rate and perception of fatigue.
Most research focuses on actual affect, or the affective states that people actually feel. In this article, I demonstrate the importance and utility of studying ideal affect, or the affective states that people ideally want to feel. First, I define ideal affect and describe the cultural causes and behavioral consequences of ideal affect. To illustrate these points, I compare American and East Asian cultures, which differ in their valuation of high-arousal positive affective states (e.g., excitement, enthusiasm) and low-arousal positive affective states (e.g., calm, peace-fulness). I then introduce affect valuation theory, which integrates ideal affect with current models of affect and emotion and, in doing so, provides a new framework for understanding how cultural and temperamental factors may shape affect and behavior.
© 2007 Association for Psychological Science.
To examine whether symptoms of striatofrontal dysfunction contribute to disability in geriatric depression.
Cross-sectional evaluation of the relationship of specific cognitive impairments, psychomotor retardation, severity of depression, and medical burden to impairment of instrumental activities of daily living.
Inpatient and outpatient services of a psychiatric university hospital located in a suburban metropolitan area.Patients. One hundred and fifty elderly psychiatric inpatients and outpatients with major depression and cognitive function ranging from normal to moderate dementia.
Psychomotor retardation was evaluated with the Hamilton retardation item and executive dysfunction was assessed with the initiation/perseveration (IP) domain of the Dementia Rating Scale. Disability, severity of depression and medical burden were assessed with the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Index of the Multilevel Assessment Instrument, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale-Geriatric, respectively.
In the entire sample (N = 150) and in the non-demented subjects (N = 101), stepwise regression analyses revealed that IP and psychomotor retardation were associated with IADL impairment. Additionally, a 'striatofrontal component', which consisted of IP and psychomotor retardation was also significantly associated with IADL impairment in the whole sample, as well as in the non-demented patients.
Clinical symptoms and neuropsychological findings associated with striatofrontal dysfunction contribute to disability in depressed elderly patients.
To identify which factors commonly associated with low back pain (LBP) and disability differ between college-aged persons with LBP and with no or minimal LBP.
Clinical measurement, observational study. Subjects were assessed for LBP with the visual analog scale (VAS) and for disability from LBP using the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI). Subjects were measured for variables commonly associated with LBP and were grouped by both VAS (minimum [min]/no pain, pain) and ODI (no disability, disability) scores.
College campus at a university.
A convenience sample (N=84) of English-speaking students (34 men, 50 women) between 18 and 30 years of age.
Not applicable.
Sports activity (sports activity score of the Baecke Physical Activity Questionnaire), depression, hamstring and hip flexor range of motion, low back extensor endurance, abdominal strength and endurance.
A significant main effect of group was found for both pain (P=.019) and disability groups (P=.006). The min/no pain and pain groups differed in back endurance (114.2±38.8s vs 94.5±44.5s, respectively; P=.04). The no disability and disability groups differed in back endurance (116.3±35.9s vs 97.1±45.7s, respectively; P=.03) and the sports activity score of the Baecke Physical Activity Questionnaire (2.98±.95 vs 2.48±.85, respectively; P=.01). Subjects with hyperkyphotic postures compared with the normative thoracic group had higher depression scores (49 vs 38.5, respectively; P=.03) and less hamstring flexibility (30.5 vs 49.9, respectively; P<.001).
Back extensor endurance was consistently different between both the pain and disability groups. Addressing limited low back extensor endurance and low levels of physical activity in young adults may have clinical relevance for the prevention and treatment of LBP and disability.
Recent research (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010) has shown that adopting a powerful pose changes people's hormonal levels and increases their propensity to take risks in the same ways that possessing actual power does. In the current research, we explore whether adopting physical postures associated with power, or simply interacting with others who adopt these postures, can similarly influence sensitivity to pain. We conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants who adopted dominant poses displayed higher pain thresholds than those who adopted submissive or neutral poses. These findings were not explained by semantic priming. In Experiment 2, we manipulated power poses via an interpersonal interaction and found that power posing engendered a complementary (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003) embodied power experience in interaction partners. Participants who interacted with a submissive confederate displayed higher pain thresholds and greater handgrip strength than participants who interacted with a dominant confederate.
One of the main ergonomic challenges during surgical procedures is surgeon posture. There have been reports of a high number of work related injuries in laparoscopic surgeons. The Alexander technique is a process of psychophysical reeducation of the body to improve postural balance and coordination, permitting movement with minimal strain and maximum ease. We evaluated the efficacy of the Alexander technique in improving posture and surgical ergonomics during minimally invasive surgery.
We performed a prospective cohort study in which subjects served as their own controls. Informed consent was obtained. Before Alexander technique instruction/intervention subjects underwent assessment of postural coordination and basic laparoscopic skills. All subjects were educated about the Alexander technique and underwent post-instruction/intervention assessment of posture and laparoscopic skills. Subjective and objective data obtained before and after instruction/intervention were tabulated and analyzed for statistical significance.
All 7 subjects completed the study. Subjects showed improved ergonomics and improved ability to complete FLS™ as well as subjective improvement in overall posture.
The Alexander technique training program resulted in a significant improvement in posture. Improved surgical ergonomics, endurance and posture decrease surgical fatigue and the incidence of repetitive stress injuries to laparoscopic surgeons. Further studies of the influence of the Alexander technique on surgical posture, minimally invasive surgery ergonomics and open surgical techniques are warranted to explore and validate the benefits for surgeons.
When more than one statistical test is performed in analysing the data from a clinical study, some statisticians and journal editors demand that a more stringent criterion be used for “statistical significance” than the conventional P<0.05.1 Many well meaning researchers, eager for methodological rigour, comply without fully grasping what is at stake. Recently, adjustments for multiple tests (or Bonferroni adjustments) have found their way into introductory texts on medical statistics, which has increased their apparent legitimacy. This paper advances the view, widely held by epidemiologists, that Bonferroni adjustments are, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, deleterious to sound statistical inference.
#### Summary points
Adjusting statistical significance for the number of tests that have been performed on study data—the Bonferroni method—creates more problems than it solves
The Bonferroni method is concerned with the general null hypothesis (that all null hypotheses are true simultaneously), which is rarely of interest or use to researchers
The main weakness is that the interpretation of a finding depends on the number of other tests performed
The likelihood of type II errors is also increased, so that truly important differences are deemed non-significant
Simply describing what tests of significance have been performed, and why, is generally the best way of dealing with multiple comparisons
Bonferroni adjustments are based on the following reasoning.1-3 If a null hypothesis is true (for instance, two treatment groups in a randomised trial do not differ in terms of cure rates), a significant difference (P<0.05) will be observed by chance once in 20 trials. This is the type I error, or α. When 20 independent tests are performed (for example, study groups are compared with regard to 20 unrelated variables) and the null hypothesis holds for all 20 comparisons, the chance of at least one test being significant is no longer 0.05, but 0.64. …
Objective:
To analyze gait patterns associated with sadness and depression. Embodiment theories suggest a reciprocal relationship between bodily expression and the way in which emotions are processed.
Methods:
In Study 1, the gait patterns of 14 inpatients suffering from major depression were compared with those of matched never-depressed participants. In Study 2, we employed musical mood induction to induce sad and positive mood in a sample of 23 undergraduates. A Fourier-based description of walking data served as the basis for the computation of linear classifiers and for the analysis of gait parameters.
Results:
Gait patterns associated with sadness and depression are characterized by reduced walking speed, arm swing, and vertical head movements. Moreover, depressed and sad walkers displayed larger lateral swaying movements of the upper body and a more slumped posture.
Conclusion:
The results of the present study indicate that a specific gait pattern characterizes individuals in dysphoric mood.
Major depression is an illness with objective physical signs occurring with some consistency. These signs are retardation of movements and diminished gestures and expressions. The patient may appear tired, self-concerned, bored, and inattentive and display a loss of interest in the surroundings. Anxiety is a conspicuous and an integral element of affective state and may be expressed by severe restlessness and agitation. Muscle tension, wringing of hands, weeping and moaning, repeating over and over in a monotonous and stereotyped way phrases expressive of misery are all important clinical signs of major depression. Similarly tachycardia, dry tongue/mouth, sweaty palms and/or bodily extremities, cold clammy skin, pallor, pupillary dilatation, tremor, and the fluctuations in blood pressure with wide pulse pressure are all important and give away the underlying distress. These signs have formed an integral part of both the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale as they have a positive correlation with the diagnosis and the severity of illness. Current practice of operational criteria does not help exclude patients with subjective perception of distress and also fails to make room for aetiopathogenesis. The DSM-IV does not include these physical signs as an integral part of the clinical picture of depression, consequently leaving the diagnosis of MDE to subjective criteria and perceptions. This could also explain a large placebo response in recent randomised controlled clinical trials.
A sample of 60 first-year psychology students judged the emotional state of 21 drawn figures and completed the Adjective Checklist and a mood questionnaire. The judgments were affected by the interaction between head position and spinal position of the figure. Each figure was associated with a unique pattern of emotions, and the judgments given were not influenced by the subjects' own emotional state.
The authors' purpose was to identify the relationship of disability to clinical measures that are part of a comprehensive psychiatric examination of depressed elderly patients.
The disability of 75 elderly inpatients and outpatients with major depression whose cognitive function ranged from normality to mild dementia was assessed with the Philadelphia Multilevel Assessment Instrument. Age at onset of depression, chronicity of depression, severity of depression, cognitive impairment, medical burden, social support and living environment were assessed with standardized instruments.
Impairment in instrumental activities of daily living was significantly associated with advanced age, severity of depression, and medical burden. The relationship of depressive symptoms to impairment in instrumental activities of daily living was not influenced by age or medical burden. Anxiety and depressive ideation as well as retardation and weight loss were significantly associated with impairment in instrumental activities of daily living. Interviewer-rated global disability was associated with advanced age at onset of depression, medical burden, and overall cognitive impairment. Specifically, a disturbance in initiation and perseveration was significantly related to global disability.
Impairment in instrumental activities of daily living appears to be a relatively independent dimension of health status that is related to depressive symptoms, particularly anxiety and depressive ideation as well as retardation and weight loss. Global disability may be associated with impairment in initiation and perseveration and with late onset of depression. These findings provide a basis for studies investigating whether psychotherapy aimed at depressive ideation and rehabilitation efforts focused on instrumental activities of daily living can improve the outcome of geriatric depression.
The authors summarize current knowledge regarding the psychomotor symptoms of depression.
Findings from the objective quantification of psychomotor symptoms are reviewed, and methodological issues are considered. The contemporary empirical literature regarding the diagnostic, prognostic, and potential pathophysiologic significance of psychomotor symptoms is summarized.
It has been repeatedly shown that depressed patients differ from normal and psychiatric comparison groups with regard to objectively quantified gross motor activity, body movements, speech, and motor reaction time. Course of illness, diurnal variation, medication status, sex, and age are associated with agitation and retardation and should be controlled when one is studying psychomotor symptoms. Psychomotor symptoms in depression may have unique significance. They have high discriminative validity, may be the only symptoms of depression that distinguish depression subtypes, and are predictive of good response to tricyclic antidepressants. Results of brain imaging and biochemical studies link depression and motor symptoms to abnormalities in the basal ganglia and basal ganglia/thalamo-cortical circuits.
The investigation of psychomotor disturbance in depression is specifically consistent with neo-Kraepelinian standards for the study of psychiatric disorders. Our current knowledge of psychomotor symptoms is conceptually obscure, yet a large body of evidence specifies their manifestation and supports their significance. Identifying the incidence of abnormal motor behaviors in depressed patients and assessing the component processes that accompany and determine their manifestation may be important advances in the study of psychomotor symptoms in depression.
The amended (revised) Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-IA; Beck & Steer, 1993b) and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) were self-administered to 140 psychiatric outpatients with various psychiatric disorders. The coefficient alphas of the BDI-IA and the BDI-II were, respectively, .89 and .91. The mean rating for Sadness on the BDI-IA was higher than it was on the BDI-II, but the mean ratings for Past Failure, Self-Dislike, Change in Sleeping Pattern, and Change in Appetite were higher on the BDI-II than they were on the BDI-IA. The mean BDI-II total score was approximately 2 points higher than it was for the BDI-IA, and the outpatients also endorsed approximately one more symptom on the BDI-II than they did on the BDI-IA. The correlations of BDI-IA and BDI-II total scores with sex, ethnicity, age, the diagnosis of a mood disorder, and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck & Steer, 1993a) were within 1 point of each other for the same variables.
In many randomised trials researchers measure a continuous variable at baseline and again as an outcome assessed at follow up. Baseline measurements are common in trials of chronic conditions where researchers want to see whether a treatment can reduce pre-existing levels of pain, anxiety, hypertension, and the like.
Statistical comparisons in such trials can be made in several ways. Comparison of follow up (post-treatment) scores will give a result such as “at the end of the trial, mean pain scores were 15 mm (95% confidence interval 10 to 20 mm) lower in the treatment group.” Alternatively a change score can be calculated by subtracting the follow up score from the baseline score, leading to a statement such as “pain reductions were 20 mm (16 to 24 mm) greater on treatment than control.” If the average baseline scores are the same in each group the estimated treatment effect will be the same using these two simple approaches. If the treatment is effective the statistical significance of the treatment effect by the two methods will depend on the correlation between baseline and follow up scores. If the correlation is low using the change score will …