Breathing shifts visuo-spatial attention

Cognition. 2023 Dec 12;243:105685. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105685. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTConsidering recent findings that breathing influences cognitive processes, two experiments explored the relationship between breathing and visuo-spatial attention. In Experiment 1, a lateralized probe detection task was inserted into the breathing cycles of 21 healthy adults to probe effects of breathing on the distribution of spatial attention. In Experiment 2 (N = 26), the Posner cueing task measured breathing-contingent detection speed for lateralized probes after endogenous or exogenous cueing. We consistently found faster responses for left probes after exhalation and for right probes after inhalation in both experiments. Breathing also affected the speed of re-alignment of spatial attention after invalid cueing in Experiment 2. This novel breathing bias shows that our ability to encode visuo-spatial information systematically fluctuates during breathing.PMID:38091888 | DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105685

Source: Cognition - December 13, 2023 Category: Neurology Authors: Francesco Belli Martin H Fischer Source Type: research