TY - JOUR
T1 - Human non-olfactory cognition phase-locked with inhalation
AU - Perl, Ofer
AU - Ravia, Aharon
AU - Rubinson, Mica
AU - Eisen, Ami
AU - Soroka, Timna
AU - Mor, Nofar
AU - Secundo, Lavi
AU - Sobel, Noam
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by grant 1599/14 from the Israel Science Foundation, a grant from Joy Ventures and by the Rob and Cheryl McEwen Fund for Brain Research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2019/5/1
Y1 - 2019/5/1
N2 - Olfactory stimulus acquisition is perfectly synchronized with inhalation, which tunes neuronal ensembles for incoming information. Because olfaction is an ancient sensory system that provided a template for brain evolution, we hypothesized that this link persisted, and therefore nasal inhalations may also tune the brain for acquisition of non-olfactory information. To test this, we measured nasal airflow and electroencephalography during various non-olfactory cognitive tasks. We observed that participants spontaneously inhale at non-olfactory cognitive task onset and that such inhalations shift brain functional network architecture. Concentrating on visuospatial perception, we observed that nasal inhalation drove increased task-related brain activity in specific task-related brain regions and resulted in improved performance accuracy in the visuospatial task. Thus, mental processes with no link to olfaction are nevertheless phase-locked with nasal inhalation, consistent with the notion of an olfaction-based template in the evolution of human brain function.
AB - Olfactory stimulus acquisition is perfectly synchronized with inhalation, which tunes neuronal ensembles for incoming information. Because olfaction is an ancient sensory system that provided a template for brain evolution, we hypothesized that this link persisted, and therefore nasal inhalations may also tune the brain for acquisition of non-olfactory information. To test this, we measured nasal airflow and electroencephalography during various non-olfactory cognitive tasks. We observed that participants spontaneously inhale at non-olfactory cognitive task onset and that such inhalations shift brain functional network architecture. Concentrating on visuospatial perception, we observed that nasal inhalation drove increased task-related brain activity in specific task-related brain regions and resulted in improved performance accuracy in the visuospatial task. Thus, mental processes with no link to olfaction are nevertheless phase-locked with nasal inhalation, consistent with the notion of an olfaction-based template in the evolution of human brain function.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062825700&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41562-019-0556-z
DO - 10.1038/s41562-019-0556-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 31089297
AN - SCOPUS:85062825700
SN - 2397-3374
VL - 3
SP - 501
EP - 512
JO - Nature Human Behaviour
JF - Nature Human Behaviour
IS - 5
ER -