Modulatory dynamics of periodic and aperiodic activity in respiration-brain coupling

Abstract

Bodily rhythms such as respiration are increasingly acknowledged to modulate neural oscillations underlying human action, perception, and cognition. Conversely, the link between respiration and aperiodic brain activity - a non-oscillatory reflection of excitation-inhibition (E:I) balance - has remained unstudied. Aiming to disentangle potential respiration-related dynamics of periodic and aperiodic activity, we applied novel algorithms of time-resolved parameter estimation to resting-state M/EEG data from two recording sites (N = 78). Our findings highlight the role of respiration as a physiological influence on brain signalling. We provide first evidence that fluctuations of aperiodic brain activity (1/f slope) are phase-locked to the respiratory cycle which strongly suggests that spontaneous state shifts of excitation-inhibition balance are at least partly influenced by peripheral bodily signals. Moreover, differential temporal dynamics in their coupling to non-oscillatory and oscillatory activity point towards a functional distinction in the way each component is related to respiration.

Respiratory modulations of cortical excitability and interictal spike timing in focal epilepsy - a case report

“…Neurotypical control population. Forty healthy volunteers (21 female, age 25.1 ± 2.7 y [M ± SD]) were used as a neurotypical control population (data from [19]). All participants reported having no respiratory or neurological diseases and gave written informed consent prior to all experimental procedures.…”

“…Respiration-locked estimations of 1/f slope. We defined a parieto-occipital region of interest for movement-corrected MEG (k = 41 sensors, taken from [19]. Single-sensor time series within this ROI were entered into the SPRiNT algorithm [26] with default parameter settings and subsequently averaged.…”

The respiratory cycle modulates distinct dynamics of affective and perceptual decision-making

“…Stimulus onsets and responses which occurred exactly at the peak or trough were defined as relating to respiratory transitions and were not included in the respiratory state analyses, as these have been shown to represent distinct cognitive (Nakamura et al, 2018) and excitatory phases (Kluger et al, 2023), and there were too few in total (approx. 5% of total trials) to justify separate transition-based analyses (see Fig 1C).…”

“…Theoretical proposals suggest that this modulation operates by adaptive gain control through the respiratory tuning of neural excitability, a mechanism that is critical for evidence accumulation during perceptual decision-making (Allen et al, 2022;Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005;Cheadle et al, 2014;Corcoran et The respiratory cycle modulates distinct dynamics Braendholt et al 2023 of affective and perceptual decision-making 3 al., 2018; Kluger et al, 2021). While some studies have demonstrated psychological and neural effects of the respiratory cycle that are broadly consistent with shifts in neural gain (Kluger et al, 2021(Kluger et al, , 2023, so far no study has directly examined the underlying cognitive mechanisms using computational modelling. As studies have highlighted consistent modulation of reaction time by respiratory rhythms (Johannknecht & Kayser, 2022), we hypothesised that breath-brain coupling may alter the underlying latent variables governing perceptual and affective decision-making.…”

“…Numerous authors have hypothesised that breath-brain coupling effects may depend in part on the modulation of neural excitation and perceptual tuning (Allen et al, 2021;Kluger et al, 2021Kluger et al, , 2023Varga & Heck, 2017). On these grounds, one might have expected to observe robust modulation of evidence…”