Summary: According to research, a particular mental circuit allows for deliberate breathing control and is related to emotional and behavioral says. This loop, spanning the anterior cingulate cortex, brainstem, and brain, slows breathing during peaceful states and accelerates it under stress. In mice, studies showed that activating this circuits reduced stress while preventing stress.
The findings provide a cerebral foundation for daily activities like yoga and meditation, and they also point out possible treatment options for panic and anxiety. Researchers want to create medications that can control breathing and combat stress. This finding highlights the primary role that inhaling plays in mental well-being.
Important Facts:
- A mental circuit connecting the brain, pons, and cortex locations breathing with emotions.
- In mice, activating the loop slowed breathing and lessened anxiety.
- Results may serve as respiration medication to control stress and prevent depression.
Origin: Salk Institute
Strong breath in, delayed breath out… ,
Is n’t it odd that we can self-soothe by slowing down our breathing?
Slow breathing has long been used by people to control their emotions, and practices like yoga and meditation have actually gained popularity for boxing and other forms of breathing. Despite this, much is known about how the brain consciously regulates our respiration and whether this affects our stress and emotional state.
For the first time in recent memory, a particular mental circuit that controls breathing voluntary has been discovered by neuroscientists at the Salk Institute. The researchers used animals to identify a group of frontal cortex brain cells that are responsible for crucial tasks like breathing.
Their findings point to a possible way to synchronize our respiration with our current behaviors and mental state by allowing the more advanced parts of the brain to communicate with the lower brainstem’s inhaling center.
The findings, published in , Nature Neuroscience , on November 19, 2024, describe a new set of mental cells and molecules that could be targeted with therapies to stop breathlessness and manage anxiety, panic, or post-traumatic anxiety disorders.
We did n’t really understand how our breathing and our emotions worked in our brains, according to senior author and author Sung Han, associate professor and Pioneer Fund Developmental Chair at Salk.” The body naturally regulates itself with deep breaths, so aligning our breathing with our emotions seems almost intuitive,” said senior author and associate professor.
Our discovery does provide a scientific reason for the beneficial results of practices like yoga and awareness on relieving negative emotions by furthering science-based findings about a particular mind mechanism responsible for slowing inhaling.
Breathing designs and psychological state are hard to untangle—if stress increases or decreases, so does the respiration rate. Prior studies had only thoroughly investigated unconscious breathing mechanisms in the brainstem despite the seemingly obvious link between personal regulation and breathing.
No specific mental wires were discovered until the Salk group took a look at the case, despite recent research that had begun to explain informed top-down mechanisms.
The researchers assumed the body’s front brain, which orchestrates complicated thoughts and behaviors, was apparently communicating to a brain region called the medulla, which controls involuntary breathing.
They first consulted a database of neurological communication data before conducting experiments to examine how these various brain regions connected.
A potential fresh breathing pattern was discovered in these first research: cells in the frontal area known as the anterior cingulate cortex were connected to a middle brain region in the pons, which was then connected to the brain just above.
Beyond the physical connections between these mental regions, what kinds of information might they exchanged be considered. For instance, when the brain is engaged, it initiates breathing.
However, the pons ‘ information actually slow down breathing rates, causing the medulla’s exercise to slow down. Han’s team hypothesized that specific emotions or behaviors may cause cortical neurons to stimulate the pons, which may slow down medulla activity and cause slower breath.
To check this, the experts recorded mental activity in mice during behaviors that alter breathe, for as sniffing, swimming, and eating, as well as during conditions that cause fear and anxiety.
In addition to monitoring the animals ‘ breathing and behavior, they measured the animals ‘ behavior and use of an approach known as optogenetics, which turns various parts of this brain circuit on and off in various emotional and behavioral settings.
Their studies confirmed that when the relationship between the brain and the pons was activated, mice were calmer and breathed more gradually, but when mice were in anxiety-inducing situations, this conversation decreased, and breathe rates went away.
Furthermore, when the researchers artificially activated this cortex-pons-medulla circuit, the animals ‘ breath slowed, and they showed fewer signs of anxiety. On the other hand, if researchers turned off this circuit, mice started to breathe more freely and became more anxious.
Altogether, this anterior cingulate cortex-pons-medulla circuit supported the voluntary coordination of breathing rates with behavioral and emotional states.
” Our findings made me consider whether we could create medications to manually slow down our breathing or stop panic disorder from hyperventilating,” I thought. Jinho Jhang, a senior research associate in Han’s lab, is the study’s first author.
” My sister, three years younger than me, has suffered from panic disorder for many years. She continues to inspire both my research and my steadfast pursuit of answers.
The researchers will continue to look into the circuit to see if drugs can force it to suddenly stop breathing. Additionally, the team is working to find the circuit’s converse—a , fast , breathing circuit, which they believe is likely also tied to emotion.
They are hopeful their findings will result in long-term solutions for people with anxiety, stress, and panic disorders, who inspire their discovery and dedication.
” I want to use these findings to design a yoga pill”, says Han.
We now have a potentially targetable brain circuit that could help us create therapies that can instantly slow breathing and induce a peaceful, meditative state, even though it may sound silly and it will take years for our work to be translated into a marketable drug.
Other authors include Shijia Liu, Seahyung Park, and David O’Keefe of Salk.
Funding: The work was supported by the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind ( IRGS 2020-1710 ).
About this news about breathing and emotion research
Author: Salk Comm
Source: Salk Institute
Contact: Salk Comm – Salk Institute
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
Sung Han and others describe a top-down slow breathing circuit that lessens negative effects. Nature Neuroscience
Abstract
A top-down, slow-breathing pattern to lessen the effects of negative emotions
Although most of breathing is automatic, behavior and emotions ‘ modulation of cortical inputs to brainstem respiratory networks, which have received little character until now, suggest otherwise.
We show that the ventrolateral medulla (VLM) is the top-down breathing pathway that extends from the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC ) neurons to the pontine reticular nucleus GABAergic inhibitory neurons ( PnCGABA ).
Anxiogenic conditions have an impact on dACCPnC activity, which is related to slow breathing cycles and volitional orofacial behaviors.
Optogenetic stimulation of the dACC→PnCGABA→VLM circuit simultaneously slows breathing and suppresses anxiety-like behaviors, whereas optogenetic inhibition increases both breathing rate and anxiety-like behaviors.
These findings suggest that the dACCPnCGABAVLM circuit is essential for coordinating slow breathing and reducing negative impact. Our study elucidates a circuit basis for top-down control of breathing, which can influence emotional states.
