Routes to embodiment

Emotional activation in a cognitive behavioral setting: extending the tradition with embodiment

The neuroscience-based concept of "embodied cognition" or "embodiment" highlights that body and psyche are closely intertwined, i.e., effects of body and psyche are bidirectional and reciprocal. This represents the view that cognitive processes are not possible without the direct participation of the body. Traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) addresses emotional processes on a conceptual level (dysfunctional thoughts, beliefs, attributions, etc.). However recent findings suggest that these processes already start at the level of bodily sensations. This opens up a way of working in therapy that includes the level of bodily sensations, where the development of emotional meaning is supported by bottom-up processes. Bidirectionality of embodiment can be effectively exploited by using body postures and movements associated with certain emotions, which we refer to as embodiment techniques, to deepen the physical experience of poorly felt emotions and support the valid construction of emotional meaning. This embodied approach offers several advantages: Prelinguistic or hard-to-grasp aspects can be identified more easily before being processed verbally. It is also easier to work with clients who have limited access to their emotions. Thus, in this paper we describe a new embodied CBT approach to working on the dysfunctional schema, which is based on three modules: body focus, emotional field, and interaction focus. In addition, using specific zones in the space of the therapy-room allows the embodiment of problematic interactions, as well as of power and powerlessness, closeness and distance, etc. Directly experiencing these processes on one's own body in the protected space of therapy allows faster and deeper insights than would be possible with conversations alone. Finally, the vitalizing power of emotions is used to create coherent action plans and successful interactions. This working method is illustrated by means of a case from practice.

The Relationship Between Brain Activation for Taking Others' Perspective and Interoceptive Abilities in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An fMRI Study

Objectives

In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we aimed to investigate the differences in brain activation between individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) individuals during perspective taking. We also examined the association between brain activation and empathic and interoceptive abilities.

Methods

During scanning, participants from the ASD (n=17) and TD (n=22) groups were shown pain stimuli and asked to rate the level of the observed pain from both self- and other-perspectives. Empathic abilities, including perspective taking, were measured using an empathic questionnaire, and three dimensions of interoception were assessed: interoceptive accuracy, interoceptive sensibility, and interoceptive trait prediction errors.

Results

During self-perspective taking, the ASD group exhibited greater activation in the left precuneus than the TD group. During other-perspective taking, relative hyperactivation extended to areas including the right precuneus, right superior frontal gyrus, left caudate nucleus, and left amygdala. Brain activation levels in the right superior frontal gyrus while taking other-perspective were negatively correlated with interoceptive accuracy, and those in the left caudate were negatively correlated with perspective taking ability in the ASD group.

Conclusion

Individuals with ASD show atypical brain activation during perspective taking. Notably, their brain regions associated with stress reactions and escape responses are overactivated when taking other-perspective. This overactivity is related to poor interoceptive accuracy, suggesting that individuals with ASD may experience difficulties with the self-other distinction or atypical embodiment when considering another person's perspective.

Articulation posture influences pitch during singing imagery

Facial muscle activity contributes to singing and to articulation: in articulation, mouth shape can alter vowel identity; and in singing, facial movement correlates with pitch changes. Here, we examine whether mouth posture causally influences pitch during singing imagery. Based on perception-action theories and embodied cognition theories, we predict that mouth posture influences pitch judgments even when no overt utterances are produced. In two experiments (total N = 160), mouth posture was manipulated to resemble the articulation of either /i/ (as in English meet; retracted lips) or /o/ (as in French rose; protruded lips). Holding this mouth posture, participants were instructed to mentally "sing" given songs (which were all positive in valence) while listening with their inner ear and, afterwards, to assess the pitch of their mental chant. As predicted, compared to the o-posture, the i-posture led to higher pitch in mental singing. Thus, bodily states can shape experiential qualities, such as pitch, during imagery. This extends embodied music cognition and demonstrates a new link between language and music.

Overactivation of posterior insular, postcentral and temporal regions during preserved experience of envy in autism

Social emotions are critical to successfully navigate in a complex social world because they promote self-regulation of behaviour. Difficulties in social behaviour are at the core of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, social emotions and their neural correlates have been scarcely investigated in this population. In particular, the experience of envy has not been addressed in ASD despite involving neurocognitive processes crucially compromised in this condition. Here, we used an fMRI adapted version of a well-validated task to investigate the subjective experience of envy and its neural correlates in adults with ASD (n = 30) in comparison with neurotypical controls (n = 28). Results revealed that both groups reported similarly intense experience of envy in association with canonical activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula, among other regions. However, in participants with ASD, the experience of envy was accompanied by overactivation of the posterior insula, the postcentral gyrus and the posterior superior temporal gyrus, regions subserving the processing of painful experiences and mentalizing. This pattern of results suggests that individuals with ASD may use compensatory strategies based on the embodied amplification of pain and additional mentalizing efforts to shape their subjective experience of envy. Results have relevant implications to better understand the heterogeneity of this condition and to develop new intervention targets.

Development of the Gender Embodiment Scale: Trans Masculine Spectrum

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people have a variety of ways of embodying their gender. We present preliminary work on The Gender Embodiment Scale for trans masculine individuals as a collaborative product from a trans-identified community-engaged team. This scale provides researchers and clinicians a survey to diversify ways gender is understood and counteracts assumptions of a singular gender experience for TGD people. This scale reflects gender embodiment as individually unique and inclusive of the body, behavior, and social treatment. Use of the scale can enhance discussion and enable assessments regarding relative importance and satisfaction across items in these domains.

What the study of spinal cord injured patients can tell us about the significance of the body in cognition

Although in the last three decades philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have produced numerous studies on human cognition, the debate concerning its nature is still heated and current views on the subject are somewhat antithetical. On the one hand, there are those who adhere to a view implying 'disembodiment' which suggests that cognition is based entirely on symbolic processes. On the other hand, a family of theories referred to as the Embodied Cognition Theories (ECT) postulate that creating and maintaining cognition is linked with varying degrees of inherence to somatosensory and motor representations. Spinal cord injury induces a massive body-brain disconnection with the loss of sensory and motor bodily functions below the lesion level but without directly affecting the brain. Thus, SCI may represent an optimal model for testing the role of the body in cognition. In this review, we describe post-lesional cognitive modifications in relation to body, space and action representations and various instances of ECT. We discuss the interaction between body-grounded and symbolic processes in adulthood with relevant modifications after body-brain disconnection.

Aperture Crossing in Virtual Reality: Physical Fatigue Delays Response Time

Visual perception and cognitive (i.e., decision-making) abilities facilitate successful avoidance of obstacles in a person's environment. However, detrimental changes to cognition can occur after physical fatigue is induced by strenuous exercise. The purpose of the current study was to determine if obstacle avoidance behaviors reflect similar negative effects following physically fatiguing exercise. A virtual reality (VR) closing-gap aperture crossing task was completed by 13 recreationally active individuals to assess the effects of physical fatigue on passability judgements and response time. Participants approached closing apertures that moved at one of seven speeds while deciding to either pass through the closing aperture or stop. Participants completed four blocks of trials over a 7-day period (i.e., pre- and post-tests on the fatiguing day and control day). No significant differences for passability judgements were found across each of the blocks, but there was a significant reduction in response time on the post-test exercise day. Thus, physical fatigue increased the time required to make, and follow through on, a decision. The current findings suggest that processes requiring more cortical areas and processing (i.e., response time) may be more detrimentally affected by physically fatiguing exercise compared to dichotomous visuomotor tasks (i.e., passability judgements).

Osteopathy and Mental Health: An Embodied, Predictive, and Interoceptive Framework

Globally, mental and musculoskeletal disorders present with high prevalence, disease burden, and comorbidity. In order to improve the quality of care for patients with persistent physical and comorbid mental health conditions, person-centered care approaches addressing psychosocial factors are currently advocated. Central to successful person-centered care is a multidisciplinary collaboration between mental health and musculoskeletal specialists underpinned by a robust therapeutic alliance. Such a collaborative approach might be found in osteopathy, which is typically utilized to treat patients with musculoskeletal disorders but may arguably also benefit mental health outcomes. However, research and practice exploring the reputed effect of osteopathy on patients with mental health problems lack a robust framework. In this hypothesis and theory article, we build upon research from embodied cognition, predictive coding, interoception, and osteopathy to propose an embodied, predictive and interoceptive framework that underpins osteopathic person-centered care for individuals with persistent physical and comorbid mental health problems. Based on the premise that, for example, chronic pain and comorbid depression are underlined by overly precise predictions or imprecise sensory information, we hypothesize that osteopathic treatment may generate strong interoceptive prediction errors that update the generative model underpinning the experience of pain and depression. Thus, physical and mental symptoms may be reduced through active and perceptual inference. We discuss how these theoretical perspectives can inform future research into osteopathy and mental health to reduce the burden of comorbid psychological factors in patients with persistent physical symptoms and support person-centered multidisciplinary care in mental health.

Building Embodied Spaces for Spatial Memory Neurorehabilitation with Virtual Reality in Normal and Pathological Aging

Along with deficits in spatial cognition, a decline in body-related information is observed in aging and is thought to contribute to impairments in navigation, memory, and space perception. According to the embodied cognition theories, bodily and environmental information play a crucial role in defining cognitive representations. Thanks to the possibility to involve body-related information, manipulate environmental stimuli, and add multisensory cues, virtual reality is one of the best candidates for spatial memory rehabilitation in aging for its embodied potential. However, current virtual neurorehabilitation solutions for aging and neurodegenerative diseases are in their infancy. Here, we discuss three concepts that could be used to improve embodied representations of the space with virtual reality. The virtual bodily representation is the combination of idiothetic information involved during virtual navigation thanks to input/output devices; the spatial affordances are environmental or symbolic elements used by the individual to act in the virtual environment; finally, the virtual enactment effect is the enhancement on spatial memory provided by actively (cognitively and/or bodily) interacting with the virtual space and its elements. Theoretical and empirical findings will be presented to propose innovative rehabilitative solutions in aging for spatial memory and navigation.

A Developmental Framework for Embodiment Research: The Next Step Toward Integrating Concepts and Methods

Embodiment research is at a turning point. There is an increasing amount of data and studies investigating embodiment phenomena and their role in mental processing and functions from across a wide range of disciplines and theoretical schools within the life sciences. However, the integration of behavioral data with data from different biological levels is challenging for the involved research fields such as movement psychology, social and developmental neuroscience, computational psychosomatics, social and behavioral epigenetics, human-centered robotics, and many more. This highlights the need for an interdisciplinary framework of embodiment research. In addition, there is a growing need for a cross-disciplinary consensus on level-specific criteria of embodiment. We propose that a developmental perspective on embodiment is able to provide a framework for overcoming such pressing issues, providing analytical tools to link timescales and levels of embodiment specific to the function under study, uncovering the underlying developmental processes, clarifying level-specific embodiment criteria, and providing a matrix and platform to bridge disciplinary boundaries among the involved research fields.

Specifying separation: avoidance, abstraction, openness to new experiences

Lee and Schwarz suggest grounded procedures of separation as a mechanism for embodied cleansing. We compare this process to other mechanisms in grounded cognition and suggest a broader conceptualization that allows integration into general cognitive models of social behavior. Specifically, separation will be understood as a mindset of completed avoidance resulting in high abstraction and openness to new experiences.

Effect of an upright (vs. stooped) posture on interpretation bias, imagery, and emotions

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Adopting an upright (vs. stooped) posture has been related to positive effects on emotional and cognitive processes. However, there is no evidence concerning the effect of posture on two key processes associated with the maintenance of depression: interpretation bias and vividness of mental imagery. The objectives were to investigate the effect of adopting an upright (vs. stooped) posture on interpretation bias and vividness of positive and negative mental imagery, and to explore the interplay between these processes and depression-related emotions.

METHODS

The sample consisted of 54 participants (M_age = 22.00, 64.8% women), who were randomly assigned to the upright or stooped condition. Participants answered self-report measures while they were adopting a specific posture. Posture was monitored through inertial technology.

RESULTS

Main results were that: upright (vs. stooped) posture led to more positive interpretations of ambiguous information and increased positive emotions related to depression (happiness, optimism and vigor); time in an upright position was associated with change in interpretation bias and vividness of positive mental imagery; and level of depressive symptomatology moderated the effect of posture on the change in interpretation bias.

LIMITATIONS

Limitations are related to the use of non-clinical sample, the use of short-term measurements, and the lack of an experimental condition adopting the usual posture.

CONCLUSIONS

Posture interacts with mechanisms involved in the maintenance of depression, as well as with depression-related emotions. This study has clinical implications that should be continued explored in order to clarify the role of manipulating the posture in individuals with depressive symptomatology.

Nodding and shaking of the head as simulated approach and avoidance responses

Our recent study within the embodiment perspective showed that the evaluation of true and false information activates the simulation of vertical and horizontal head movements involved in nodding and shaking of the head (Moretti & Greco, 2018). This result was found in an explicit evaluation task where motion detection software was deployed to enable participants to assess a series of objectively true or false statements by moving them with the head vertically and horizontally on a computer screen, under conditions of compatibility and incompatibility between simulated and performed action. This study replicated that experiment, but with subjective statements about liked and disliked food, in both explicit and implicit evaluation tasks. Two experiments, plus one control experiment, were devised to test the presence of a motor-affective compatibility effect (vertical-liked; horizontal-disliked) and whether the motor-semantic compatibility found with objective statements (vertical-true; horizontal-false) could be a sub-effect of a more general and automatic association (vertical-accepted; horizontal-refused). As expected, response times were shorter when statements about liked foods and disliked foods were moved vertically and horizontally respectively by making head movements, even when participants were not explicitly required to evaluate them. In contrast, the truth compatibility effect only occurred in the explicit evaluation task. Overall results support the idea that head-nodding and shaking are simulated approach-avoidance responses. Different aspects of the meaning of these gestures and the practical implications of the study for cognitive and social research are discussed.

Embodied Concepts and Mental Health

Often drawing on the phenomenological tradition, a number of philosophers and cognitive scientists working in the field of "embodied cognition" subscribe to the general view that cognition is grounded in aspects of its sensorimotor embodiment and should be comprehended as the result of a dynamic interaction of nonneural and neural processes. After a brief introduction, the paper critically engages Lakoff and Johnson's "conceptual metaphor theory" (CMT), and provides a review of recent empirical evidence that appears to support it. Subsequently, the paper underscores some of the limitations of CMT, points to some philosophical problems that require further attention, and explores possible implications for understanding and treating of mental disorders.

Reaching for the high note: judgments of auditory pitch are affected by kinesthetic position

Auditory pitch is represented on a vertical continuum (e.g., high vs. low). In three experiments, we examined whether the kinesthetic experience of moving in a particular direction (e.g., walking up vs. down stairs; reaching up vs. down) would affect judgments of auditory pitch. Participants listened to three tones twice each, once while moving upward and once while moving downward, and estimated the pitch of each tone. In all experiments, participants' judgments of the tones' pitch were biased in the direction of their movement. Moreover, this effect is not due to visibility of the movement or to using a numerical response method. Our results suggest that kinesthetic information from one's own bodily movements biases pitch estimation, and several possible mechanisms for the effect are discussed.

Action perception and motor imagery: Mental practice of action

Motor cognition is related to the planning and generation of actions as well as to the recognition and imagination of motor acts. Recently, there is evidence that the motor system participates not only in overt actions but also in mental processes supporting covert actions. Within this framework, we have investigated the cortical areas engaged in execution, observation, and imagination of the same action, by the use of the high resolution quantitative ¹⁴C-deoxyglucose method in monkeys and by fMRI in humans, throughout the entire primate brain. Our data demonstrated that observing or imagining an action excites virtually the same sensory-motor cortical network which supports execution of that same action. In general agreement with the results of five relevant meta-analyses that we discuss extensively, our results imply mental practice, i.e. internal rehearsal of the action including movements and their sensory effects. We suggest that we actively perceive and imagine actions by selecting and running off-line restored sensory-motor memories, by mentally simulating the actions. We provide empirical evidence that mental simulation of actions underlies motor cognition, and conceptual representations are grounded in sensory-motor codes. Motor cognition may, therefore, be embodied and modal. Finally, we consider questions regarding agency attribution and the possible causal or epiphenomenal role the involved sensory-motor network could play in motor cognition.

Are monkeys intuitive Aristotelians? Associations between target size and vertical target position in long-tailed macaques

Different hypotheses have been put forward to explain the interaction between size perception and spatial position. To explore the evolutionary roots of these phenomena, we tested long-tailed macaques' performance in a two-choice discrimination task on a touchscreen and contrasted two hypotheses. First, a hierarchy association in which large objects are associated with top positions, due to a link between power, dominance and importance with top position. Second, a naive Aristotelian association in which large objects are associated with bottom positions, due to the experience that larger objects are heavier and thus more likely to be found at the bottom. Irrespective of training regime (positively reinforcing the small (Touch-Small) or large (Touch-Large) stimulus), the monkeys had a bias to touch the bottom compared to the top location. Individuals in the Touch-Small group took significantly longer to acquire the task, but subsequently made fewer mistakes. When presented with two stimuli of equal medium size, the Touch-Large group had a clear bias to touch the lower stimulus, while the Touch-Small group touched both locations at equal rates. Our findings point to an innate bias towards larger stimuli and a natural preference for the lower position, while the extent of interaction between size and position depends on executive control requirements of a task.

Expand your body when you look at yourself: The role of the posture in a mirror exposure task

Mirror exposure (ME) is one of the main components of the treatment of patients with eating disorders symptomatology and it has shown its effectiveness in improving several outcomes (e.g., body dissatisfaction). However, the study as to what body posture should be adopted to maximize its effectiveness has been neglected. From embodied cognition and emotion theories, the adoption of an expansive (vs. contractive) body posture has been associated with positive changes in cognitive and emotional responses. The objective of this study was to analyze the effect of adopting an expansive (vs. contractive) posture before an ME task on body-related emotions and cognitions, as well as to analyze the possible moderator and mediator variables of these relationships. The sample was composed of 68 women (age: M = 21.74, SD = 3.12) with high scores on body dissatisfaction. Participants were randomly assigned to the expansive or contractive condition, where the openness of the arms/legs and the back position were manipulated. Posture was monitored by an electronic device and participants filled out several self-reported measures. ANCOVAs, moderation, mediation, and moderated mediated analyses were performed. Results showed that women in the expansive condition showed higher positive emotions after the ME. Moreover, exploratory analyses showed that adopting an expansive posture improved positive emotions, leading to improvements in negative emotions, body image satisfaction, and appraisal of the person’s own body. Psychological interventions should explore the value of holding an expansive posture before the ME in women with body dissatisfaction.

Congruent bodily arousal promotes the constructive recognition of emotional words

Considerable research has shown that bodily states shape affect and cognition. Here, we examined whether transient states of bodily arousal influence the categorization speed of high arousal, low arousal, and neutral words. Participants realized two blocks of a constructive recognition task, once after a cycling session (increased arousal), and once after a relaxation session (reduced arousal). Results revealed overall faster response times for high arousal compared to low arousal words, and for positive compared to negative words. Importantly, low arousal words were categorized significantly faster after the relaxation than after the cycling, suggesting that a decrease in bodily arousal promotes the recognition of stimuli matching one's current arousal state. These findings highlight the importance of the arousal dimension in emotional processing, and suggest the presence of arousal-congruency effects.

The role of fluency in preferences for inward over outward words

The present studies examined a novel explanation for the in-out effect, the phenomenon that words with inward wanderings of consonantal articulation spots are preferred over words with outward wanderings. We hypothesized that processing fluency might account for the in-out effect instead of, or in addition to, the originally proposed mechanism of motor-associated motivational states. Inward words could be more fluently processed than outward words, which could lead to the preference effect. Corpus analyses (Studies 1a and 1b) revealed more inward than outward words in English and German, which could account for their differing fluency. Additionally, inward compared to outward words were pronounced faster (Study 2) and were rated as being easier to pronounce (Studies 3a and 3b), indicating greater fluency. Crucially, a mediation analysis (Study 4) suggests that the influence of consonantal direction on preference was partially mediated by fluency. However, accounting for the influence of fluency still left a significant residual in-out effect, not accounted for by our fluency measure. This evidence supports a partial causal contribution of articulation fluency to the in-out effect.

Sources of mu activity and their functional connectivity in perceiving complexities in reciprocal social interactive motion: An exploratory study using the 'Namaste' task

Cognitive processes underlying reciprocal social interactions are understood by the mechanism of embodiment, which is closely related to the mirror neuron system. Electroencephalographic (EEG) mu activity is a neural marker of the mirror neuron system. This study investigated the mu activity, localization of its sources and functional connectivity, which was induced while watching reciprocal social interactive motion across various degrees of complexity. Eighteen healthy participants underwent high-resolution EEG recording using 256-channels while they watched a specifically designed, culture specific, video task that showed two persons interacting socially using body gestures. Task complexity was determined by (1) whether there was an identical gestural response or a non-identical one; (2) whether the participant watched two persons interacting or was virtually involved in the interaction. Source localization and functional connectivity analysis was conducted for mu activity across various tasks. We also correlated mu activity and functional connectivity measures with serum BDNF. We found that spectral densities in various brain sources of mu activity and their increased functional connectivity distinguished identical and non-identical reciprocal expression observations, while mu suppression alone did not discriminate various degrees of complexities. These findings might have important implications in the understanding of mechanisms underlying mirror neuron dysfunction in various psychiatric disorders.

Embodiment of abstract categories in space… grounding or mere compatibility effects? The case of politics

In two experiments, the role played by stimulus response compatibility in driving the spatial grounding of abstract concepts is examined. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to classify politics-related words appearing to the left or the right side of a computer monitor as socialist or conservative. Responses were given by pressing vertically aligned keys and thus orthogonal to the spatial information that may have been implied by the words. Responses given by left or right index finger were counterbalanced. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task, participants categorized political words or non-words presented to the left or the right auditory channels, by pressing the top/bottom button of a response box. The response category labels (word or non-word) were also orthogonal to the spatial information that may have been implied by the stimulus words. In both experiments, responses were faster when socialism-related words were presented on the left and conservatism-related words were presented on the right, irrespective of the reference of the response keys or labels. Overall, our findings suggest that the spatial grounding of abstract concepts (or at least politics-related ones) is independent of experimentally driven stimulus-response compatibility effects.

Sequential Approach-Avoidance Movements

Abstract. The affective consequences of sequential approach-avoidance movements in the mouth were investigated. Participants (total N = 872) received words for which consonantal stricture spots either wandered first-inward-then-outward (e.g., FOLOKOLOF; approach-avoidance) or first-outward-then-inward (e.g., KOLOFOLOK; avoidance-approach) in the mouth. In a pilot study, it was established that first-inward-then-outward (first-outward-then-inward) is associated with negative disgust (positive ingestion) reactions (Experiment 1). Approach-avoidance sequences were preferred less than avoidance-approach sequences (Experiments 2a–3b); and this effect disappeared under oral motor-interference (Experiment 4). Experiment 5 provides evidence that a mere recency effect is an unlikely explanation for these effects. Thus, sequentially executed oral approach and avoidance movements do not cancel each other out but jointly influence resulting affective responses.

Mechanisms of embodiment

This paper is a critical review of recent studies demonstrating the mechanism of sensorimotor simulation in different cognitive domains. Empirical studies that specify conditions under which embodiment occurs in different domains will be discussed and evaluated. Examples of relevant domains are language comprehension (Tucker and Ellis, 1998), autobiographical memory (Dijkstra et al., 2007), gestures (Alibali et al., 2014), facial mimicry (Stel and Vonk, 2010), and problem solving (Wiemers et al., 2014). The focus of the review is on supporting claims regarding sensorimotor simulation as well as on factors that modulate dynamic relationships between sensorimotor components in action and cognitive domains, such as expertise (Boschker et al., 2002). This discussion takes place within the context of currently debated issues, specifically the need to specify the underlying mechanisms of embodied representations (Zwaan, 2014; Körner et al., 2015).