Respiratory modulation of startle eye blink: a new approach to assess afferent signals from the respiratory system

Abstract

One contribution of 16 to a theme issue 'Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health'. Current approaches to assess interoception of respiratory functions cannot differentiate between the physiological basis of interoception, i.e. visceralafferent signal processing, and the psychological process of attention focusing. Furthermore, they typically involve invasive procedures, e.g. induction of respiratory occlusions or the inhalation of CO 2 -enriched air. The aim of this study was to test the capacity of startle methodology to reflect respiratoryrelated afferent signal processing, independent of invasive procedures. Forty-two healthy participants were tested in a spontaneous breathing and in a 0.25 Hz paced breathing condition. Acoustic startle noises of 105 dB(A) intensity (50 ms white noise) were presented with identical trial frequency at peak and on-going inspiration and expiration, based on a new pattern detection method, involving the online processing of the respiratory belt signal. The results show the highest startle magnitudes during on-going expiration compared with any other measurement points during the respiratory cycle, independent of whether breathing was spontaneous or paced. Afferent signals from slow adapting phasic pulmonary stretch receptors may be responsible for this effect. This study is the first to demonstrate startle modulation by respiration. These results offer the potential to apply startle methodology in the non-invasive testing of interoception-related aspects in respiratory psychophysiology.This article is part of the themed issue 'Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health'.

Afferent cardiac signals modulate attentional engagement to low spatial frequency fearful faces

“…It is known that a considerable portion of HRV variance is explained by state-specific factors (Bertsch, Hagemann, Naumann, Sch€ achinger, & Schulz, 2012). Moreover, several other mechanisms not explored by our manipulation, such as respiratory activity (Eckberg, 2003;Schulz, Schilling, V€ ogele, Larra, & Sch€ achinger, 2016), are also important contributors to beat-to-beat changes in heart rate. On the other hand, the lack of significant HRV effects may reflect type-II error inherent to single HRV measurements with relatively small sample size (Bertsch et al, 2012).…”

Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health

“…Schulz et al [42] have previously shown that the eyeblink startle is modulated by interoceptive cardiac afferent signals. Here, the authors focus on the respiratory system and for the first time present startle modulation by respiration.…”

Respiration modulates oscillatory neural network activity at rest

“…Indeed, studies of respiration-brain coupling have recently attracted increased attention, reporting a range of cognitive and motor processes to be influenced by respiration phase. Human participants were found to spontaneously inhale at onsets of cognitive tasks 6 and respiration phase modulated neural responses in sensory 7 and face processing 8 tasks as well as during oculomotor control 9 . Parallel to this body of work, animal studies have conclusively shown respiration to entrain brain oscillations not only in olfactory regions 10 , but also in rodent whisker barrel cortex 11 and even hippocampus 12 .…”