What Positive Affect Research Reveals About DNRS
For years, many healing approaches have focused on reducing what feels wrong: stress, fear, anxiety, overwhelm, discomfort, and distress.
And of course, relief matters.
But emerging research points to a powerful and hopeful idea: healing may come from feeling less bad. It may also involve helping the brain relearn how to feel safe, motivated, hopeful, connected, and alive.
That is why recent research on Positive Affect Treatment, or PAT, is so exciting, and why it offers a meaningful scientific lens for understanding the benefits of the Dynamic Neural Retraining System™.
A New Look at Positive Emotion in Healing
A 2026 randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open titled “Positive Affect Treatment for Depression, Anxiety, and Low Positive Affect: A Randomized Clinical Trial” speaks to the growing importance of positive states in the healing process. The study included 98 adults with severely low positive affect, depression, and anxiety. Participants received 15 weekly individual therapy sessions delivered via telehealth and were assigned to either Positive Affect Treatment, which focuses on reward processing, or Negative Affect Treatment, which focuses on reducing negative affect. The findings suggested that modulation of reward and threat processes was central to therapeutic improvement, with the reward-focused PAT intervention producing superior clinical outcomes. [1]
This represents an important shift in how we think about healing.
Rather than only asking, “How do we reduce distress?” PAT asks, “How do we restore the brain’s capacity for reward, motivation, pleasure, and positive engagement?”
That question matters because positive affect is not simply about “being happy.” It reflects the brain’s capacity for interest, pleasure, motivation, hope, and meaningful engagement with life.
Why This Matters for DNRS
DNRS is a neuroplasticity-based rehabilitation program designed to help rewire limbic system neural circuits associated with chronic complex illness patterns.
While DNRS is not the same as Positive Affect Treatment, the PAT research supports a principle that is highly relevant to DNRS:
The brain may heal more effectively when it is trained toward positive states, not merely away from negative ones.
This distinction is profound.
Many people who come to DNRS have spent years managing symptoms, avoiding triggers, tracking reactions, and trying to calm an overactive stress response. DNRS offers a different path: one that works with the brain’s capacity for change.
Rather than organizing life around limitation, DNRS helps participants engage in a structured process of neuroplastic retraining by gently teaching the brain and nervous system to respond differently.
The Science Is Catching Up to Hope
The PAT study is part of a larger scientific movement recognizing the importance of positive affect and reward processing in therapeutic change.
A 2024 review in Nature Reviews Psychology, titled “Positive affect and reward processing in the treatment of depression, anxiety and trauma,” argued that many treatments for depression, anxiety, and trauma primarily focus on reducing negative emotions, while often doing less to restore positive emotion and reward processing. The authors called for a shift toward approaches that also strengthen positive affect, reward responsiveness, and quality of life. [2]
This matters because the brain is constantly learning from repeated experience.
When the brain repeatedly rehearses danger, limitation, and threat, those pathways can become stronger. But when the brain is repeatedly guided toward safety, possibility, and positive engagement, new patterns can begin to form.
DNRS is built around this principle of neuroplastic change.
From Symptom Management to Life Expansion
One of the most powerful benefits of DNRS is that it is not simply focused on symptom management. It is focused on helping people rebuild capacity.
This is where DNRS becomes especially practical.
The goal is not just to feel calmer in theory. The goal is to help people move toward life again.
That might mean returning to social activities, tolerating environments with more ease, expanding food variety, increasing movement, working, traveling, creating, laughing, connecting, and participating in life with greater confidence.
DNRS helps train the brain toward what is possible.
Positive Emotion Is More Than a Mood
Positive emotional states can influence how we perceive the world, how flexible our thinking becomes, and how we respond to stress.
Barbara Fredrickson’s well-known broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions proposes that positive emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, and love can broaden a person’s momentary thought-action repertoire, helping build longer-term psychological, social, and coping resources. [3]
This does not mean ignoring difficult emotions or pretending everything is fine.
It means recognizing that positive states can serve an important biological and psychological purpose. They can help shift attention, open perspective, support resilience, and create fertile ground for new learning.
In the context of DNRS, this is deeply relevant. Neuroplastic healing is not only about interrupting old patterns. It is also about strengthening new ones.
A Growing Body of Supportive Research
Research on positive psychology interventions also supports the idea that intentionally cultivating positive states can influence well-being. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies published in BMC Public Health reviewed 39 studies with 6,139 participants and found that positive psychology interventions can improve subjective well-being, psychological well-being, and depressive symptoms. [4]
The PAT trial adds a particularly compelling contribution because it did not simply examine general positivity. It tested a structured treatment designed to target reward processing and positive affect in adults with clinically significant depression, anxiety, and low positive affect. [1]
This is one reason the study is so relevant to the broader conversation of neuroplasticity: it points to the clinical value of training the brain toward positive engagement, rather than focusing only on reducing negative states.
Why This Feels So Hopeful
For people living with chronic illness patterns, limbic system impairment, central sensitization, fatigue, sensitivities, anxiety, or other forms of nervous system dysregulation, life can begin to feel smaller.
DNRS offers a hopeful message:
Your brain is not fixed.
Your nervous system can learn.
Old patterns can change.
New pathways can be strengthened.
A different life can become possible.
The emerging research on positive affect adds scientific support to this message. It suggests that restoring positive emotional capacity is not simply a pleasant outcome of healing, but that it may be one of the pathways that help healing unfold.
The Takeaway
The latest research on Positive Affect Treatment points to a powerful truth:
Feeling better may help the brain heal better.
DNRS has long emphasized the brain’s ability to change through repeated, intentional neuroplastic practice. Emerging research on positive affect and reward processing helps validate the importance of training the brain not only away from threat, but toward safety, motivation, connection, hope, and possibility.
Healing is not only about reducing what hurts.
It is also about helping the brain remember how to move toward life again.
Research Index
[1] Meuret, A. E., Rosenfield, D., Wang, E., et al. “Positive Affect Treatment for Depression, Anxiety, and Low Positive Affect: A Randomized Clinical Trial.” JAMA Network Open, 2026.
This randomized clinical trial included 98 adults with severely low positive affect, depression, and anxiety. Participants received 15 weekly individual therapy sessions via telehealth. The study found that the reward-focused PAT intervention produced superior clinical outcomes compared with Negative Affect Treatment.
[2] Craske, M. G., Dunn, B. D., Meuret, A. E., Rizvi, S. J., Taylor, C. T., et al. “Positive affect and reward processing in the treatment of depression, anxiety and trauma.” Nature Reviews Psychology, 2024.
This review argues that many treatments for depression, anxiety, and trauma focus primarily on reducing negative emotions and may not fully restore positive affect or reward processing. The authors call for greater attention to interventions that enhance positive emotion and reward responsiveness.
[3] Fredrickson, B. L. “The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2004.
This foundational paper proposes that positive emotions broaden attention and thought-action patterns while helping build lasting psychological, social, and coping resources.
[4] Bolier, L., Haverman, M., Westerhof, G. J., Riper, H., Smit, F., & Bohlmeijer, E. “Positive psychology interventions: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies.” BMC Public Health, 2013.
This meta-analysis reviewed 39 studies with 6,139 participants and found that positive psychology interventions can improve well-being and reduce depressive symptoms, with variation by intervention and study quality.
[5] Taylor, C. T. “Reward Processing as a Therapeutic Target in Anxiety and Depression—Clinical Promise and More to Learn.” JAMA Network Open, 2026.
This invited commentary discusses the clinical importance of the PAT trial and describes reward processing as an emerging therapeutic target in anxiety and depression.
