A significant amount of research has highlighted the importance of a motor component in the brain’s processing of emotional, motivational and social information. Posturography has emerged as an interesting way to assess motor correlates associated with this process. In this review, we highlight recent results within the functional context of painful stimulus perception and discuss the interest in broadening the use of posturography to other motivational and societal functional contexts. Although characterized by significant feasibility, the single measurement of the COP’s anteroposterior displacement presents limitations for attesting approach–avoidance behavior towards a visual target. Here, we discuss a number of methodological avenues that could go some way towards overcoming these limitations.

Over the past decade, researchers have focused on studying the functional context of perceiving painful stimuli, particularly concerning the posturographic correlates of emotional processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the differential modulation of non-linear measures characterizing postural control in the context of perceiving painful stimuli. The study involved 36 healthy young participants who, while standing, viewed images depicting feet and hands in painful or non-painful situations, both actively (by imagining themselves affected by the situation) and passively. For Center of Pressure (COP) displacement, three non-linear measures (Sample Entropy, Fractal Dimension, and Lyapunov exponent) were calculated. The results suggest lower values of FD and LyE in response to active stimulation compared to those recorded for passive stimulation. Above all, our results pledge for the usefulness of the Lyapunov exponent for assessing postural modulation dynamics in response to painful stimuli perception. The feasibility of this calculation could provide an interesting insight in the collection of biomarkers related to postural correlates of emotional processes and their modulation in neurological disease where socio-affective functions can be often impaired before cognitive ones.