Bates Marsha E, Lesnewich Laura M, Uhouse Sarah Grace, Gohel Suril, Buckman Jennifer F
Cardiac Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology and Health, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Piscataway, NJ, United States.
Center of Alcohol Studies, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Piscataway, NJ, United States.
Front Psychiatry. 2019 Sep 5;10:624. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00624. eCollection 2019.
Conscious attempts to regulate alcohol and drug use are often undermined by automatic attention and arousal processes that are activated in the context of salient cues. Response to these cues involves body and brain signals that are linked via dynamic feedback loops, yet no studies have targeted the cardiovascular system as a potential conduit to alter automatic neural processes that maintain cue salience. This proof-of-concept study examined within-person changes in neural response to parallel but unique sets of visual alcohol-related cues at two points in time: prior to versus following a brief behavioral intervention. The active intervention was resonance breathing, a rhythmical breathing task paced at 0.1 Hz (6 breaths per minute) that helps normalize neurocardiac feedback. The control intervention was a low-demand cognitive task. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess changes in brain response to the cues presented before (A1) and after (A2) the intervention in 41 emerging adult men and women with varying drinking behaviors. The resonance breathing group exhibited significantly less activation to A2 cues compared with A1 cues in left inferior and superior lateral occipital cortices, right inferior lateral occipital cortex, bilateral occipital pole, and temporal occipital fusiform cortices. This group also showed significantly greater activation to A2 cues compared with A1 cues in medial prefrontal, anterior and posterior cingulate, and precuneus cortices, paracingulate, and lingual gyri. The control group showed no significant changes. Thus, following resonance breathing, activation in brain regions involved in visual processing of cues was reduced, while activation in brain areas implicated in behavioral control, internally directed cognition, and brain-body integration was increased. These findings provide preliminary evidence that manipulation of the cardiovascular system with resonance breathing alters neural activation in a manner theoretically consistent with a dampening of automatic sensory input and strengthening of higher-level cognitive processing.
对酒精和药物使用进行有意识的管控，往往会受到在显著线索情境中被激活的自动注意和唤醒过程的破坏。对这些线索的反应涉及通过动态反馈回路相连的身体和大脑信号，但尚无研究将心血管系统作为改变维持线索显著性的自动神经过程的潜在途径。这项概念验证研究在两个时间点考察了个体对两组平行但独特的与酒精相关的视觉线索的神经反应变化：在简短行为干预之前和之后。主动干预是共振呼吸，这是一种以0.1赫兹（每分钟6次呼吸）的节奏进行的有节律呼吸任务，有助于使神经心脏反馈正常化。对照干预是一项低要求的认知任务。功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）用于评估41名具有不同饮酒行为的成年男女在干预前（A1）和干预后（A2）对呈现线索的大脑反应变化。与A1线索相比，共振呼吸组在左侧枕叶上下外侧皮质、右侧枕叶下外侧皮质、双侧枕极和颞枕梭状回皮质对A2线索的激活明显减少。与A1线索相比，该组在内侧前额叶、前扣带回和后扣带回以及楔前叶皮质、旁扣带回和舌回对A2线索的激活也明显增加。对照组没有显著变化。因此，在进行共振呼吸后，参与线索视觉处理的脑区激活减少，而与行为控制、内源性认知和脑体整合相关的脑区激活增加。这些发现提供了初步证据，即通过共振呼吸对心血管系统进行调控，会以一种在理论上与抑制自动感觉输入和加强高级认知加工相一致的方式改变神经激活。
