The role of respiration in human perception and cognition

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Joachim Gross; Dr. Daniel Kluger
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497946371

Human respiration at rest is a continuous, rhythmic sequence of active inspiration and passive expiration. Despite being largely automatic, breathing can also be adapted top-down when required, thanks to intricate connections of key respiratory structures like the preBötzinger complex and the olfactory bulb to both the limbic system and the neocortex. Moreover, (pre-)motor cortices exert voluntary respiratory control through representations of respiratory muscles. Animal studies have long shown respiration to significantly influence complex motor behaviour as well as brain signalling. These findings strongly suggest that we cannot assign functional roles to brain activity without accounting for interactions with peripheral activity. Fittingly, recent human studies have shown respiration to not only modulate performance in cognitive and perceptual tasks, but also neural oscillations across a wide network of cortical and subcortical areas. Yet, it is still entirely unclear whether the interplay of respiration and neural oscillations in action, perception, and cognition is merely accidental or, on the contrary, behaviourally beneficial. One argument for the latter comes from theories of predictive brain processing which conceptualise neural signalling as an active, bidirectional interplay of equitable bottom-up and top-down streams of information. In case of respiration, this most prominently concerns the sensorimotor loop controlling respiratory dynamics and their links to cognitive and affective states. In temporally coordinating the breathing act and internal brain dynamics, the sampling of bottom-up sensory information can be aligned with top-down predictive streams. In trying to advance the long-needed synthesis of predictive processing and respiration-brain coupling, we here propose a comprehensive research programme centred on simultaneous recordings of high-resolution magneto-encephalography (MEG), behavioural data from predictive processing paradigms, and peripheral signals. Our main aim is twofold: First, we will explicitly test hypotheses derived from an interoceptive account of human respiration, particularly with regard to the role of top-down signalling in respiration-brain coupling. We provide a critical distinction between a) top-down expectations of external, multidimensional stimulus features and b) voluntary top-down respiratory control in different breathing conditions. Second, we seek to investigate the behavioural implications of these top-down effects in perception and cognition. Interoceptive inference accounts suggest a central role for respiration in the timing of information sampling, raising intriguing questions regarding a) respiratory adaptations to different task contexts and b) how disruptions in the functional network affect respiratory control and behavioural performance.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants