Somatic yoga therapy for functional neurological disorder: An experimental pilot study examining cognitive and affective mechanisms

Accumulating evidence suggests alterations in neurocognitive, affective, interoceptive and autonomic processing in functional neurological disorder (FND), yet interventions targeting these processes remain underexplored. This study investigated the possible immediate and longer-term effects of a somatic yoga intervention on cognitive control, emotion regulation, state dissociation and affect, autonomic arousal, and interoceptive processing in FND. Twenty-three adults with FND completed six weeks of somatic yoga (N=12) or six weeks of a music-based relaxation control (N=11). At baseline, post-single session, and post-six weeks, participants completed laboratory measures of sustained attention, response inhibition, interoception, emotion regulation, and state dissociation and affect. Electrocardiography and galvanic skin conductance were recorded throughout. Linear mixed effects models assessed potential change on day one, immediately pre/post a single session, and from day 1 to the end of the six-week programme. After one session, stop signal reaction time, negative affect, and heartrate decreased in both groups (Δ=.69-.75). After one session and at six weeks, improved sustained attention, elevated positive affect, and reduced dissociation were seen in both groups, with a larger magnitude of change in yoga (Δ=.50-1.10). The yoga group exhibited fewer direction errors on the response inhibition task and shorter response times on the sustained attention task, with the opposite seen in the music group (Δ=.50-1.17). Both in the short- and longer-term, somatic yoga might lead to adaptive changes in attention and executive functioning, arousal, state affect and dissociation.