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

𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴:https://t.co/WREIn4Im41 pic.twitter.com/IZCL1NTES6

— Luiz Pessoa (@PessoaBrain) July 14, 2023

Note that breathing involves both top-down voluntary control and bottom-up involuntary control. 

From the linked article:

Highlights

• Respiration fundamentally influences neural oscillations in animals and humans.
• Neuropsychiatric disorders are characterised by specific oscillatory profiles.
• Here, respiratory and neural aberrations are integrated to explain psychopathology.
• We propose a gradient model of respiratory-modulated prediction errors.

Abstract

Breathing plays a crucial role in shaping perceptual and cognitive processes by regulating the strength and synchronisation of neural oscillations. Numerous studies have demonstrated that respiratory rhythms govern a wide range of behavioural effects across cognitive, affective, and perceptual domains. Additionally, respiratory-modulated brain oscillations have been observed in various mammalian models and across diverse frequency spectra. However, a comprehensive framework to elucidate these disparate phenomena remains elusive. In this review, we synthesise existing findings to propose a neural gradient of respiratory-modulated brain oscillations and examine recent computational models of neural oscillations to map this gradient onto a hierarchical cascade of precision-weighted prediction errors. By deciphering the computational mechanisms underlying respiratory control of these processes, we can potentially uncover new pathways for understanding the link between respiratory-brain coupling and psychiatric disorders.