Motion and emotion: depression reduces psychomotor performance and alters affective movements in caregiving interactions

Abstract

Background: Impaired social functioning is a well-established feature of depression. Evidence to date suggests that disrupted processing of emotional cues may constitute part of this impairment. Beyond processing of emotional cues, fluent social interactions require that people physically move in synchronized, contingent ways. Disruptions to physical movements are a diagnostic feature of depression (psychomotor disturbance) but have not previously been assessed in the context of social functioning. Here we investigated the impact of psychomotor disturbance in depression on physical responsive behavior in both an experimental and observational setting.Methods: In Experiment 1, we examined motor disturbance in depression in response to salient emotional sounds, using a laboratory-based effortful motor task. In Experiment 2, we explored whether psychomotor disturbance was apparent in real-life social interactions. Using mother-infant interactions as a model affective social situation, we compared physical behaviors of mothers with and without postnatal depression (PND).Results: We found impairments in precise, controlled psychomotor performance in adults with depression relative to healthy adults (Experiment 1). Despite this disruption, all adults showed enhanced performance following exposure to highly salient emotional cues (infant cries). Examining real-life interactions, we found differences in physical movements, namely reduced affective touching, in mothers with PND responding to their infants, compared to healthy mothers (Experiment 2).Conclusions: Together, these findings suggest that psychomotor disturbance may be an important feature of depression that can impair social functioning. Future work investigating whether improvements in physical movement in depression could have a positive impact on social interactions would be of much interest.

Changes in Depression Subtypes Among Men in STAR*D: A Latent Transition Analysis

“…This is consistent with previous work demonstrating that psychomotor retardation is related to greater depression severity (Calugi et al, 2011), poor response to citalopram (McGrath et al, 2008), and impairment of social functioning (K. S. Young, Parsons, Stein, & Kringelbach, 2015). Psychomotor retardation appears to involve the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, basal ganglia, and prefrontal cortex .…”

The neural basis of responsive caregiving behaviour: Investigating temporal dynamics within the parental brain

“…At the behavioural level, both listening to infant cries and looking at infant faces promotes a self-reported desire to enact caregiving responses in adult listeners [32,73,102]. Hearing infant cries has also been shown to significantly increase the speed of motor responses on an effortful motor task [103,104]. Similarly, viewing infant faces promotes effortful responding in adults, as demonstrated through key-pressing tasks [105].…”

On Cuteness: Unlocking the Parental Brain and Beyond

“…Our brains are equipped to respond quickly to a baby cry, whether we are female or male, parents or non-parents. That is, even nulliparous adults display very fast brain responses to both auditory [37, 38] and visual [15, 39] infant cues. Important general differences between negative aversive stimuli, such as crying, and positive inviting stimuli, such as cute babbling and laughter, are found in the parental behaviour that follows them.…”

“…It particularly can affect cognitive processes, such as attention and motivation, that are vital for developing parenting capabilities. In terms of responsiveness to infant signals, for example, both mothers with PND [77, 78] and adults with depression [38, 79] exhibit disrupted sensitivity to negative stimuli, such as distress in infant cries and faces. PND has also been associated with increased risk for childhood cognitive and socio-emotional problems [80, 81].…”