Massage Clarksville Tennessee By DC Royalty, Licensed Massage Therapist AND Homeopathy  931.645.6195
139 Dean Drive, Suite 7, Clarksville TN 37040
Massage Clarksville By DC Royalty, LMT and Homeopathy
  • Massage Clarksville By DC Royalty, Licensed Massage Therapist and Homeopathy
    • About DC
    • Blog
  • Types of Massage
    • Medical Massage
    • Pet/Animal Massage
  • Price + Gift Certificates
    • Gift Certificates
  • How To Contact DC
    • Natural Healing With Homeopathy
    • Newsletters About Massage >
      • What Is Holistic Medicine?
      • What Happens During A Massage?
      • My First Massage
      • The True Benefits Of Massage Therapy
      • Massage Feels Good & Is Beneficial
      • Get the Most From Your Next Massage
      • Importance of Communication During Massage
      • Most Popular Type Of Massage
      • There Is More Than One Kind of Massage
      • Feel Ill The Day After Massage?
      • Relaxation, Medical & Sports Massage Differences
      • Cancer Massage
      • Acne on Back? Massage?
      • Fibromyalgia & Massage
      • Massage & Reduced Pain After Heart Surgery
      • Massage For Inflammation After Exercise
      • Massage & Ill-Related Stress
      • Exercise & Massage
      • Massage & Your Office Job
      • Massage & High Blood Pressure
      • Massage and Sleep
      • Massage and Osteoarthritis of the Knee
      • Massage and Alzheimer's Disease
      • Massage and Low Back Pain
      • Massage For Seniors
      • Massage and Multiple Sclerosis
      • Massage & Pregnancy
      • Can Massage Help With Migraine Pain?
      • Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) Statistics

Breathing modulates brain activity and mental function

1/17/2017

0 Comments

 
Courtesy of The Guardian


New research shows that the rhythm of breathing directly impacts neural activity in a network of brain areas involved in smell, memory and emotions

 Breathing in through the nose synchronises electrical activity across a network of brain regions involved in smell, memory, and emotions.

Mo Costandi is a neurobiologist and freelance science writer. He blogs at Neurophilosophy, on the science blog network

The rhythm of breathing co-ordinates electrical activity across a network of brain regions associated with smell, memory, and emotions, and can enhance their functioning, according to a new study by researchers at Northwestern University. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that breathing does not merely supply oxygen to the brain and body, but may also organise the activity of populations of cells within multiple brain regions to help orchestrate complex behaviours.
Your nose knows death is imminent

 
Read moreNearly 75 years ago, the British physiologist Edgar Adrian used electrodes to record brain activity in hedgehogs, and found that brain waves in the olfactory system were closely coupled to breathing, with their size and frequency being directly related to the speed at which air moves through the nose. Since then, this same activity has been observed in the olfactory bulb and other brain regions of rats, mice and other small animals, but until now it has not been investigated in humans.
In this new study, a research team led by Christina Zelano recorded electrical activity directly from the surface of the brain in seven patients being evaluated for surgery to treat drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy, focusing on three brain regions: the piriform cortex, which processes smell information from the olfactory bulbs, the hippocampus, which is critical for memory formation, and the amygdala, which plays an important role in emotional processing. At the same time, they monitored the patients’ respiratory rates with either pressure sensors or an abdominal breathing belt. 
The researchers found that slow brain wave oscillations in the piriform cortex, and higher frequency brain waves in the hippocampus and amygdala, were synchronised with the rate of natural, spontaneous breathing. Importantly, though, the brain wave oscillations in all three regions were most highly synchronised immediately after the patients breathed in, but less so while they were breathing out. And when the patients were asked to divert breathing to their mouths, the researchers observed a significant decrease in brain wave coupling.
AdvertisementThus, the air plumes that periodically enter the nose during natural breathing appear to synchronise the activity of neurons in the piriform cortex, and this synchrony is then propagated to the hippocampus and amygdala.
Given the well established respective roles of the hippocampus and amygdala in memory and emotions, the researchers conducted a series of behavioural tests to investigate whether breathing phase might influence thought processes. First, they recruited 21 healthy participants, and asked them to perform an emotion discrimination task. They were shown images of faces expressing either fear or surprise, in quick succession, and asked to identify the emotion in each one as quickly as they could. Another group of 75 healthy participants performed a visual memory task, in which they viewed a series of images and then identify the ones they had seen before from a second series presented to them 20 minutes later.
Participants in the emotion discrimination task identified the fearful faces, but not the surprised ones, more quickly when they saw them while breathing in compared to when breathing out. And those who performed the memory task were far better able to recall images that had been presented to them while breathing than those they saw while breathing out.
A cooler way to evaluate brain surgery patientsBreathing therefore modulates emotional recognition and memory recall, with both processes being more accurate during breathing in compared to breathing out. Once again, the route of breathing was critically important – the effects were seen when the participants were asked to breath in through their noses, but their performance on both tasks declined markedly when they breathed through their mouths.
Breathing is controlled unconsciously by the brainstem, and humans alter their breathing pattern in response to emotional stimuli and mental effort, suggesting that our thought processes affect the rate of breathing. These new findings suggest that breathing can also impact our mental function. For example, breathing rapidly when we are scared or highly aroused may optimise information processing in the brain so that we can think and act appropriately and quickly.
“When you breathe in… you are stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala and hippocampus,” says Zelano. “In a panic state, your breathing rhythm becomes faster [and] as a result you’ll spend proportionally more time inhaling,” [This] could have a positive impact on brain function and result in faster response times to dangerous stimuli in the environment.”
ReferenceZelano, C., et al. (2016). Nasal Respiration Entrains Human Limbic Oscillations and Modulates Cognitive Function. J. Neurosci., 6: 12448 –12467 [Abstract]


Mo Costandi trained as a developmental neurobiologist and now works as a freelance science writer. His work has appeared in Nature, Science, and New Scientist, among other publications. He is also the author of Neuroplasticity (MIT Press, 2016) and 50 Human Brain Ideas You Really Need to Know (Quercus, 2013)
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    From DC Royalty

    Welcome! Great to Connect and Looking forward to continuing my massage therapy practice.  

    ​Thanks to all my past and current massage clients who have allowed me to work at a profession I love for the since 1992 right here in Clarksville, Tennessee!

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly