Abstract
The problems of mouth breathing have been well-studied, but the neural correlates of functional connectivity (FC) still remain unclear. We examined the difference in FC between the two types of breathing. For our study, 21 healthy subjects performed voluntary mouth and nasal breathing conditions during a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The region of interest (ROI) analysis of FC in fMRI was conducted using a MATLAB-based imaging software. The resulting analysis showed that mouth breathing had widespread connections and more left lateralization. Left inferior temporal gyrus had the most left lateralized connections in mouth breathing condition. Furthermore, the central opercular cortex FC showed a significant relationship with mouth breathing. For nasal breathing, the sensorimotor area had symmetry FC pattern. These findings suggest that various FCs difference appeared between two breathing conditions. The impacts of these differences need to be more investigated to find out potential link with cognitive decline in mouth breathing syndrome.
Highlights
Respiration is the process of taking in oxygen required for cellular metabolism from the outside environment and releasing carbon dioxide from the cells to the external environment
As shown in the 3D rendering maps in Figures 2 and 3, more densely connected region of interest (ROI) were present in the mouth breathing condition
The size measurement represents the number of above-threshold connections between the seed and all other ROIs, and the intensity represents the overall strength as the sum of the absolute T-values for these above-threshold connections [25]
Summary
Respiration is the process of taking in oxygen required for cellular metabolism from the outside environment and releasing carbon dioxide from the cells to the external environment. Breathing in and out through the nose is referred to as nasal breathing, which plays various vital roles, owing to the hair present in the nostrils and mucous in the nasal cavity. These roles aid in filtering unwanted particles and preventing them from entering the lungs, and control air temperature and humidity inside the trachea. Mouth breathing is a multifactorial problem that can be attributed to physiological and mechanical etiologies [4] It affects 17% of the general population [5] and 53.3% of children [6]. The lack of filtering, humidifying, and warming of air inhaled through the mouth may lead to decreased lung function [7]
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