It's About Time – Breathing Dynamics Modulate Emotion and Cognition

The common approach to studying the effects of breathing on emotion and cognition is to characterize breathing statically by using the average or instantaneous breathing rate or amplitude. While these measures are useful for measuring breathing activity, they are less useful for capturing intrinsic dynamics of the breathing signal, that is, the patterns of change in its activity over time. The relationship between breathing dynamics and emotion/cognition remains unclear. To fill this knowledge gap, we characterized breathing dynamics by a set of measures which capture the breathing signal’s rate and amplitude central tendency, variability, complexity, entropy, and timescales. Then, we conducted a principal component analysis and demonstrated that these metrics capture similar, yet distinct features of the breathing rate and amplitude time series. Next, we showed that breathing dynamics change across rest and task conditions, suggesting they may predict behavioural states. Finally, using multivariate analyses, we demonstrated that breathing complexity and entropy in the resting state are strongly positively related to anxiety levels while breathing variability in the task state is strongly negatively related to working memory performance. Our results collectively illustrated the distinct roles that breathing dynamics play in shaping cognition and emotion. Our findings suggest that the breathing signal’s intrinsic dynamics are key in linking the different levels of the neurovisceral integration model (body, brain, psyche) – breathing dynamics may provide their “common currency”.