Slow-Paced Breathing Modulates Perceptual Sensitivity to Facial Expression

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Psychology

Background:

• Respiration and cortical rhythms interact, affecting environmental perception.
• The precise link between breathing, brain activity, and perception is not fully understood.
• Breathing can be voluntarily controlled, offering a method to study brain-respiration interactions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how controlled breathing pace influences visual perception.
• To explore the brain-respiration interactions underlying these perceptual changes.
• To identify neural correlates of perceptual sensitivity during different breathing paces.

Main Methods:

• Participants engaged in normal- or slow-paced breathing.
• Visual stimuli (fearful/neutral faces) were presented during inspiration or expiration.
• Magnetoencephalography (MEG) recorded brain activity.
• Behavioral sensitivity and cortical dynamics (alpha/beta, theta frequencies) were analyzed.

Main Results:

• Slow breathing decreased perceptual sensitivity during expiration and increased it during inspiration.
• Cortical dynamics mirrored behavioral findings, with neural correlates in the alpha/beta range.
• Slow breathing reduced prestimulus theta phase coherence and altered phase-power coupling.
• These changes were linked to respiration-brain phase synchronization and modulated response-related power.

Conclusions:

• Voluntarily controlled breathing pace acts as a top-down mechanism influencing visual perception.
• Brain-respiration phase synchronization and theta phase coherence are key mediators.
• Altered cortical resource allocation during breathing cycles impacts perceptual outcomes.