Respiration modulates oscillatory neural network activity at rest

by Daniel S. Kluger, Joachim Gross Despite recent advances in understanding how respiration affects neural signalling to influence perception, cognition, and behaviour, it is yet unclear to what extent breathing modulates brain oscillations at rest. We acquired respiration and resting state magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from hu man participants to investigate if, where, and how respiration cyclically modulates oscillatory amplitudes (2 to 150 Hz). Using measures of phase–amplitude coupling, we show respiration-modulated brain oscillations (RMBOs) across all major frequency bands. Sources of these modulations spanned a wi despread network of cortical and subcortical brain areas with distinct spectrotemporal modulation profiles. Globally, delta and gamma band modulations varied with distance to the head centre, with stronger modulations at distal (versus central) cortical sites. Overall, we provide the first comprehen sive mapping of RMBOs across the entire brain, highlighting respiration–brain coupling as a fundamental mechanism to shape neural processing within canonical resting state and respiratory control networks (RCNs).
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: research