Neuroscientists Have Found How Exactly a Deep Breath Changes Your Mind

Breathing is an automatic reflex that is controlled by the brain and is a normal reflex. Brain contains the life sustaining functions as heartbeat or sleeping. The new researches revealed that breathing patters can change your brain.

Breathing patterns change the patterns of brain functions and different patterns of breathing help brain functions. Humans have the ability to control their brain and it is unique; controlling emotions, sleeping patterns and also eating patterns. These abilities are not trivial they are not shared by other animals. Breathing is also similar; animals do not change their breathing patterns but their breathing changes only when they are running and resting. Scientists are baffled about how humans can regulate their breathing as well as access some unaccesable parts of the brain. The therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy include regulative breathing. So, does controlling breathing and exhaling actually have an effect on the mind?

A study conducted by Dr Jose Herrero in collaboration with Dr Ashesh Mehta began by observing brain activity when patients were breathing normally. Next was that the patients were given a simple task to distract them. They had to click a button when circles appeared on the computer screen. This helped them observe when people breathe naturally and did not focus on their breath. After this the patients were told to count their breathing; when these patterns changed, their brain activity changed as well. The breathing manipulation activated different patterns of the brain.

These have provided the information that breathing patterns change brain activity and help athletes and different people manipulate their breathing to get the best out of their brain activity. Apart from studying the ability of humans to manipulate and regulate their neural activity, the study also uniquely studied a rare method of neurological research: directly peering inside the brain of conscious and alert human beings. General neuroscience involving humans use imaging techniques that is MRI or EEG to understand the neurological activity in human brain from outside the skull. But these studies involve electrodes implanted on humans’ brains.

The ability to look inside peoples’ brains allows us to study their thinking, decision making and even dreaming by directly observing the brain. The subjects in their work were patients who had electrodes implanted in their brain as a part for the clinical treatment for epilepsy. They were experiencing seizures that were uncontrollable by medication and required surgical intervention to detect the problem.

The fact that detection requires the patient to have a spontaneous seizure for identifying the exact onset location, which can take up to several days, they are kept in the hospital along with the electrodes to continuously monitor their brain activity.

The advice of taking a deep breath might not be cliché. It does help in controlling the brain and thinking patterns and also helps in accessing secret parts of the brain. Deep breathing is actually good for health as it lets the oxygen go into the brain and stimulates the brain activity that increases good health. Deep breathing is closely related to nervous activity and helps you to control your body. Further researches will let us know more about breathing patterns and their nature in brain activities.