Every Breath Has a Unique Link to Brain Activity

A new study finds that the brain closely tracks the detailed shape of each breath, linking breathing patterns with brain activity involved in thought, emotion and memory.

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Breathing may be far more closely tied to brain activity than a simple count of breaths per minute suggests. A new study found that the detailed shape of individual breaths is closely linked with patterns of neural activity in brain regions involved in cognition, emotion and memory. Researchers compared changes in airflow and body movement during breathing with electrical activity recorded directly from the brain. The study involved 16 people undergoing clinical monitoring for treatment resistant epilepsy, allowing researchers to examine the relationship between breathing and brain activity with unusually precise measurements. The results suggest that differences in the timing, intensity and shape of individual inhales and exhales are reflected in corresponding patterns of brain activity. This does not mean that people can instantly control memory or brain function simply by changing their breathing. It also does not yet provide a way to predict conditions such as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy or sudden infant death syndrome. Those possibilities are areas for future research. The findings instead provide a new way to study how a basic body rhythm interacts with the brain and may eventually help researchers understand situations where normal breathing and brain activity become disrupted.

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