When locomotion is used to interact with the environment: investigation of the link between emotions and the twofold goal-directed locomotion in humans

Abstract

Walking as a means to interact with the environment has a twofold goal: body displacement (intermediate goal) and the future action on the environment (final representational goal). This involves different processes that plan, program, and control goal-directed locomotion linked to motivation as an "emotional state," which leads to achieving this twofold goal. The aim of the present study was to determine whether emotional valence associated with the final representational goal influences these processes or whether they depend more on the emotional valence associated with the intermediate goal in young adults. Twenty subjects, aged 18-35 years, were instructed to erase an emotional picture that appeared on a wall as soon as they saw it. They had to press a stop button located 5 m in front of them with their right hand. Their gait was analyzed using a force platform and the Vicon system. The main results suggest that the emotional valence of the intermediate goal has the greatest effect on the processes that organize and modulate goal-directed locomotion. A positive valence facilitates cognitive processes involved in the temporal organization of locomotion. A negative valence disturbs the cognitive processes involved in the spatial organization of the locomotion and online motor control, leading to a deviating trajectory and a final body position that is more distant from the stop button. These results are discussed in line with the motivational direction hypothesis and with the affective meaning of the intended response goal.

Intermuscular coherence (IMC) reveals that affective emotional pictures modulate neural control mechanisms during the initiation of arm pointing movements.

“…Altogether, our results on hand movement parameters con rm previous ndings [8,53] , and are consistent with the motivational direction model. When being faced with a highly arousing context, pointing towards a target in a pleasant emotional context creates a congruent situation, which would activate the appetitive neural circuits [1,46,47,54] and speed up the movement compared to the case with an unpleasant context.…”

Angry and happy expressions affect forward gait initiation only when task relevant.

“…One element that has not been thoroughly considered is the goal relevance of emotional stimuli. On the one hand, when participants are instructed to perform just forward (Bouman et al, 2015; Naugle et al, 2011; Stins et al, 2015; Vernazza-Martin et al, 2015) or backward (Bouman & Stins, 2018) whole-body movements, they are forced to move in a given direction and might potentially completely overlook the valence of the images. On the other hand, when participants are requested to perform a backward or a forward movement according to the stimulus valence (Stins & Beek, 2011; Stins et al, 2011; Yiou et al, 2014), the emotional content is task relevant, but its effect potentially conflates with the need of planning different movements.…”

“…Given such heterogeneity, it is not that simple to ascribe the effects of emotional stimuli on movements solely to stimuli valence. Second, in all studies, the number of trials performed by each participant was relatively small, that is, less than 70 (Bouman & Stins, 2018; Bouman et al, 2015; Naugle et al, 2011, 2010; Stins et al, 2014, 2011; Vernazza-Martin et al, 2015). As is well known, a low number of trials is a source of increased variability.…”

The organization of the movement depends mainly on the anticipation of its sensory and emotional consequences

“…A total of 128 digitized photographs (64 pleasant and unpleasant per block) were selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Based on the scores of the computerized 9-point version of the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale 16 , experimenters choose pictures according to the gender of the participants and according to the potential effects of arousal on posture and movements 35 .…”