ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Movement Science
Relationship between anxiety symptoms and cervical motor control in individuals without diagnosed psychiatric or neurological disorders
Provisionally accepted
Andrea Calleja Caballero
Juan Luis Sánchez González*
Marta Gómez MateosVenesa Santos RodríguezJesus Perez
Fatima Perez-Robledo- University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: This study aimed to explore the association between anxiety symptoms and cervical motor control in individuals without diagnosed psychiatric or neurological disorders. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 101 participants aged 18 to 60 without diagnosed psychiatric or neurological disorders. Anxiety levels were assessed using the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A), a clinician-oriented measure applied here to a non-clinical sample, and severity cut-offs were interpreted cautiously. Cervical motor control was measured using the Head Repositioning Accuracy-to-Target test. Additional clinical variables such as vertigo, cervical pain, and headache were also recorded. Statistical analyses included Spearman correlations, multiple linear and logistic regressions. Results: Higher anxiety levels were significantly associated with increased angular error in cervical motor control, particularly in flexion, extension, and right rotation movements. A progressive increase in pain perception and motor dysfunction was observed in participants with moderate and severe anxiety. Multivariate analyses showed that cervical motor control errors and vertigo were independently associated with anxiety severity and clinically significant anxiety. Conclusion: Our findings revealed an association between anxiety symptoms and cervical sensorimotor disturbances in individuals without diagnosed psychiatric or neurological disorders. Given the cross-sectional design, these findings should be interpreted as observational and exploratory.
Keywords: Anxiety, Cervical motor control, Headache, Neck Pain, Vertigo
Received: 10 Nov 2025; Accepted: 12 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Calleja Caballero, Sánchez González, Gómez Mateos, Santos Rodríguez, Perez and Perez-Robledo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Juan Luis Sánchez González
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.