Breathing in waves: Understanding respiratory-brain coupling as a gradient of predictive oscillations

Dr. Heck and his group collaborators have been working on the influence of breathing on brain activity for over a decade. In 2014 Dr. Heck and colleagues published a seminal paper in which they reported for the first time that breathing modulates neuronal activity in the neocortex and that this influence comes predominantly from the olfactory bulb. Since then, several groups have independently confirmed the initial findings and new studies show that breathing can modulate cognitive brain function. This latest publication by Heck and colleagues in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews is the result of an interdisciplinary and international collaboration between theoreticians, neuroscientists, imaging experts and philosophers from Denmark, Germany, and the USA. The review summarizes the latest findings on brain-breath coupling and introduces a conceptual framework based on respiratory influence on predictive coding to explain the various influences breathing has on brain functions. Read the full article here.