A mounting body of evidence suggests that Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR) is successful in reducing the impact of posttraumatic symptoms. Although the exact mechanisms of action remain unknown, theories from the psychological to the neuroscientific continue to emerge, expand, and evolve. This study will examine four of the most prominent theories to date and weigh the evidence for and against each one. It will also review, compare, and contrast the theories, evaluate the research supporting each one, and propose the most likely explanation for EMDR’s success given the state of the research. Neurobiological mechanisms and correlates as well as the controversy over the use of eye movements will also be reviewed. Implications for future research will also be discussed.

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The present study examined the degree to which acceptance, reappraisal, or suppression based strategies are associated with changes in heart rate, eyeblink startle magnitude, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), and self-reports of subjective experience in a sample of college undergraduates. Participants were randomly assigned to use one of these strategies during an associative learning task that contained stimuli that signaled either threat or safety from a noxious stimulus as well as during exposure to highly arousing pleasant and unpleasant images. Participants in the reappraisal and suppression groups displayed greater eyeblink startle magnitudes during the emotion induction procedures compared with participants in the acceptance and control groups. No group differences were found with respect to heart rate or ERPs in response to the emotion inductions. Compared with participants assigned to the acceptance and control conditions, participants assigned to the reappraisal and suppression conditions rated unpleasant images as being less unpleasant; however, the groups did not differ in arousal ratings. Participants did not differ in their ratings of discomfort during the associative learning task, nor did they differ in their valence and arousal ratings for pleasant pictures. Findings suggest a possible dissociation of cognition and physiological reactivity for participants using reappraisal and suppression strategies to regulate mood and affect. / Psychology

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<p> <b>Background:</b> Perception of changes in physiological arousal is theorized to form the basis for which the brain labels emotional states. Interoception is a process by which individuals become aware of physiological sensations. Lowered emotional awareness has been found to be associated with lower interoceptive awareness. Alexithymia is a personality trait associated with lowered emotion recognition ability which affects 10-20% of the university student population in Western countries. Research suggests that being made aware of one&rsquo;s heartbeat may enhance emotional awareness. <b>Objective(s): </b> The present study attempted to enhance emotion recognition abilities directly via an experimental interoceptive manipulation in order to decrease levels of alexithymia. It had three aims: 1) To examine whether exposing individuals to the interoceptive sound of their own heart beat could illicit changes in their emotion recognition abilities,2) To examine whether higher emotion recognition abilities as a result of listening to one&rsquo;s own heartbeat differed by alexithymia group, and 3) if higher interoceptive awareness was associated with higher RME scores during the own heartbeat sound condition. <b>Methods: </b> 36 participants were recruited from an introductory psychology class at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Participants completed lab-based tests of emotion recognition followed by questionnaires assessing alexithymia and interoceptive abilities. During the lab-based test of emotion recognition, participants were subjected to an interoceptive manipulation by listening to three sounds (in random order): own heartbeat, another person&rsquo;s heartbeat, and footsteps. To test aim 1, a repeated-measures ANOVA examined differences in emotion recognition scores during the various sound conditions (i.e., no sound, own heartbeat, other heartbeat, footsteps). For evaluating aim 2, a two way 3 x 4 RM ANOVA tested for differences in RME scores by sound condition when individuals were alexithymic, possibly alexithymic and not alexithymic. Aim 3 was examined using correlations between the attention to body and emotion awareness subscale scores separately with RME score for own heartbeat. <b>Results:</b> Contrary to predictions, RME performance did not vary according to body sound condition, <i>F</i> (3, 105) =.53, p = .67, <i>&eta;</i>&sup2; = .02. A significant interaction was seen between alexithymia category and RME scores during the interoceptive sound conditions, <i>F</i> (6, 99) = 2.27, p = .04, <i>&eta; </i>&sup2; = .12. However, post-hoc analyses did not reveal significant differences between specific alexithymia categories and RME scores. A significant positive relationship was seen between RME during own heartbeat and being able to pay attention to the body (<i>r</i> (36) = .34, p = .05, <i> R</i>&sup2; = .11). <b>Discussion:</b> Our results suggest that more attention was directed toward facial emotions when subjects listened to their own heartbeat but this increase did not result in measurable changes in RME performance. <b>Limitations:</b> Although using a within-subjects design potentially increased statistical power, a between-subjects design with random assignment could have eliminated the effects of repeated measurement and condition order. <b>Implications:</b> The most novel of these findings was that individuals paid more attention to the emotional stimuli when hearing their own heartbeat. More research is needed to understand if the interoceptive sound manipulation may aide in improving other cognitive functions or earlier steps in the emotion process. Future research using other measures of interoception and attention are necessary to confirm the result.</p>