Division of Physiome, Department of Physiology, Hyogo College of Medicine, Mukogawa cho, Nishinomiya, Hyogo Japan.
Division of Cerebral Integration, Department of System Neuroscience, National Institute of Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi Japan.
PLoS One. 2018 Sep 14;13(9):e0204021. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204021. eCollection 2018.
Recent research suggests that cognitive performance might be altered by the respiratory-synchronized activity generated in the brain. Previous human studies, however, have yielded inconsistent results when assessing task performance during distinct respiratory phases (inspiratory phase vs. expiratory phase). We therefore tested whether cognitive performance was regulated based on the timing of breathing components (e.g., expiratory-to-inspiratory (EI) phase transition) during the retrieval process. To determine the role of respiration in performance, the present study employed healthy subjects (n = 18) in a delayed matching-to-sample visual recognition task where a test cue was given in the respiratory phase-locked (Phased) or regularly paced (Non-phased) presentation paradigm. During the Phased session but not during the Non-phased session, the response time (RT) of the task increased by 466 ms (p = 0.003), and accuracy decreased by 21.4% (p = 0.004) when the retrieval process encompassed the EI transition. Breathing-dependent changes were particularly prominent when the EI transition occurred during the middle step of the retrieval process. Meanwhile, changes in the RT and accuracy were not observed when the retrieval process encompassed the inspiratory-to-expiratory phase transition. This is the first time that a certain phase transition in the respiratory cycle has been shown to modulate performance on a time scale of several seconds in a cognitive task. We propose that attenuation of these breathing-dependent cognitive fluctuations might be crucial for the maintenance and stability of successful performance in daily life and sports.
最近的研究表明，大脑中产生的呼吸同步活动可能会改变认知表现。然而，以前的人类研究在评估不同呼吸阶段（吸气阶段与呼气阶段）的任务表现时得出了不一致的结果。因此，我们测试了认知表现是否基于呼吸成分的时间（例如，呼气到吸气（EI）阶段转换）在检索过程中得到调节。为了确定呼吸在表现中的作用，本研究采用了健康受试者（n = 18）在延迟匹配样本视觉识别任务中，其中在呼吸相位锁定（相位）或定期起搏（非相位）呈现范式中给出测试线索。在相位阶段但不在非相位阶段，任务的反应时间（RT）增加了 466 毫秒（p = 0.003），并且当检索过程包括 EI 转换时，准确性下降了 21.4%（p = 0.004）。当 EI 转换发生在检索过程的中间步骤时，呼吸依赖性变化尤为明显。同时，当检索过程包括吸气到呼气阶段转换时，RT 和准确性的变化未观察到。这是第一次在认知任务中，呼吸周期中的某个相位转换被证明可以在几秒钟的时间尺度上调节表现。我们提出，这些呼吸依赖的认知波动的衰减可能对日常生活和运动中成功表现的维持和稳定性至关重要。
