Respiratory modulation of brain activity

Controlled deep, slow breathing is a common strategy in anger management, meditation and general stress relief. How does respiration modify cognitive and emotional states? A new study from researchers at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and University of Memphis provides the first possible explanation to for how slow breathing influences brain function. The study, headed by Detlef Heck, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, UTHSC, which bridges work with animal and human subjects clinical and basic research and, was presented at the National International Society for Neuroscience Meeting in Chicago in October. The team first published first results in from studies in mice in Nature Communications in 2014.

The results from this current translational study project presents a radically new view of respiration – breathing not only provides oxygen, but also directly influences cognitive brain function.

“The brain generates oscillatory activity in a frequency range between 30 to 100 cycles per second whenever it performs cognitive tasks, such as thinking of a word associated with a picture, trying to remember something where we left our keys or simply focusing on a specific task. We found that The the strength of those oscillations increases and decreases with every breath. That is why we believe that respiration affects cognitive function. We are designing experiments to further test this hypothesis,” said Detlef Heck, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology in the College of Medicine, UTHSC.

The Clinical Neurosciences and Neurology departments at Le Bonheurand UTHSC participated in this study by conducting series of experiments using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electrodes placed directly onto the surface of the cortex. The team continues this line of study and will be publishing the research shortly.