26/02/2022
For a better functioning brain, control your breathing.
Breathing in brain function:
The ups and downs of the breath are not only reflected in emotion they shape our cognitive functioning as well. For instance, nasal breathing phase has been shown to affect both emotional judgments and memory recall, with people being able to identify emotional faces quicker and remember an object better when presented at inhalation than.
(iEEG) recordings from epileptic patients showed how breathing is entrained with slow cortical rhythms in the olfactory cortex, which in turn modulate higher frequency rhythms in regions closely related to affective and cognitive functioning.
To test whether breathing phase is indeed related to emotion and memory, recruited an independent group of healthy participants to test whether their recognition of emotional faces was affected by breathing phase.
Results showed that the recognition of emotional faces was dependent on the respiratory phase in which the stimuli were presented.
Breathing controls emotions:
Controlled breathing can be used as an anchor into the present, which can help in the process of emotion recognition and regulation.
The prime example of how breathing affects emotion is the physiological and psychological relaxation that occurs when the breathing rhythm is slowed down to 0.1 Hz or 6 breaths per minute, a technique know as slow-paced breathing.
This type of breathing is associated with respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a cardiorespiratory synchronization in which the interval between consecutive heartbeats decreases during inspiration and increases during expiration.
Slow breathing also increases the variation in time intervals between heartbeats, or HRV - an indicator of a healthy systemic balance and ability to respond to physiological functioning.
Conversely, HRV is known to be reduced by a fast breathing rhythm. On one hand, this effect is highly relevant for stress-related disorders, such as anxiety and depression, in which HRV is known to be reduced.
Read more here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.647579/full
How does slow nasal breathing make you feel?
