Emotion regulation through execution, observation, and imagery of emotional movements

•We tested the effects of movements that are associated with a certain emotion (emotional movements), on affective state.•Four types of emotional movements were tested: happy, sad, fearful, and neutral/not associated with any emotion.•Each movement type was assessed during three tasks: motor execution, motor observation and kinesthetic motor imagery.•Movements in all three tasks enhanced corresponding affective state.•Thus, emotional movements have potential to regulate emotions, raising the possibility for therapeutic applications.

According to Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, emotions are generated by conveying the current state of the body to the brain through interoceptive and proprioceptive afferent input. The resulting brain activation patterns represent unconscious emotions and correlate with subjective feelings. This proposition implies a corollary that the deliberate control of motor behavior could regulate feelings. We tested this possibility, hypothesizing that engaging in movements associated with a certain emotion would enhance that emotion and/or the corresponding valence. Furthermore, because motor imagery and observation are thought to activate the same mirror-neuron network engaged during motor execution, they might also activate the same emotional processing circuits, leading to similar emotional effects. Therefore, we measured the effects of motor execution, motor imagery and observation of whole-body dynamic expressions of emotions (happiness, sadness, fear) on affective state. All three tasks enhanced the corresponding affective state, indicating their potential to regulate emotions.