Prefrontal responses to negative emotional movements in healthy and symptomatic individuals

Brain-body interaction is central to emotion. For example, emotional bodily movements not only express emotions but also evoke associated emotional states. However, a mechanistic understanding of how emotional movements influence our mood remains elusive due to the challenge of recording brain activity in moving subjects. Here, we used wireless functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate how emotional movements modulate prefrontal activity in healthy (low PHQ-9) and symptomatic (high PHQ-9) subjects. We found that imitating negative emotional movements commonly activates the left anterior prefrontal cortex in healthy subjects. In contrast, the same movements deactivate this region in subjects with elevated depressive symptoms, revealing an opposite prefrontal response between groups. In an exploratory follow-up, PHQ-9 scores assessed 1-2 weeks later increased in healthy subjects and decreased in symptomatic subjects; however, this change tracked baseline symptom severity irrespective of movement valence and thus can be a result of regression to the mean, and is therefore reported with caution. This research suggests that the left anterior prefrontal cortex is associated with brain-body interaction during negative emotional movements, and that this prefrontal response differs markedly in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms.