Abstract
Pulmonary ventilation and respiration are considered to be primarily involved in oxygenation of blood for oxygen delivery to cells throughout the body for metabolic purposes. Other pulmonary physiological observations, such as respiratory sinus arrhythmia, Hering Brewer reflex, cardiorespiratory synchronization, and the heart rate variability (HRV) relationship with breathing rhythm, lack complete explanations of physiological/functional significance. The spectrum of waveforms of breathing activity correlate to anxiety, depression, anger, stress, and other positive and negative emotions. Respiratory pattern has been thought not only to be influenced by emotion but to itself influence emotion in a bi-directional relationship between the body and the mind. In order to show how filling in gaps in understanding could lead to certain future developments in mind–body medicine, biofeedback, and personal health monitoring, we review and discuss empirical work and tracings to express the vital role of bodily rhythms in influencing emotion, autonomic nervous system activity, and even general neural activity. Future developments in measurement and psychophysiological understanding of the pattern of breathing in combination with other parameters such as HRV, cardiorespiratory synchronization, and skin conductivity may allow for biometric monitoring systems to one day accurately predict affective state and even affective disorders such as anxiety. Better affective prediction based on recent research when incorporated into personal health monitoring devices could greatly improve public mental health by providing at-home biofeedback for greater understanding of one’s mental state and for mind–body affective treatments such as breathing exercises.
Highlights
William James, known as the “Father of American Psychology,” once said, “For us, emotion dissociated from all bodily feeling is inconceivable” (James, 1884)
Responses mediated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) provide the most information on emotional state (Pace-Schott et al, 2019), and the ANS acts in “sympathy” with emotion, innervating the heart, lungs, and many other bodily systems (Valderas et al, 2015). Such physiological variables associated with the variety of emotions are often effortlessly measured with the right technology and have been used to detect one’s autonomic state as in the polygraph (Rosenfeld, 1995)
We suggest that respiratory pattern could be an essential mimicry target when simulating others’ emotions and that understanding how the spectrum of such bodily patterns map onto the spectrum of emotions will provide a means to measure unconscious emotion perception and emotional body-state simulation for research purposes
Summary
William James, known as the “Father of American Psychology,” once said, “For us, emotion dissociated from all bodily feeling is inconceivable” (James, 1884). Responses mediated by the ANS provide the most information on emotional state (Pace-Schott et al, 2019), and the ANS acts in “sympathy” with emotion, innervating the heart, lungs, and many other bodily systems (Valderas et al, 2015) Such physiological variables associated with the variety of emotions are often effortlessly measured with the right technology and have been used to detect one’s autonomic state as in the polygraph (lie detector) (Rosenfeld, 1995). We suggest that respiratory pattern could be an essential mimicry target when simulating others’ emotions and that understanding how the spectrum of such bodily patterns map onto the spectrum of emotions will provide a means to measure unconscious emotion perception and emotional body-state simulation for research purposes Somatocentric perspectives such as the Somatic Marker Hypothesis argue that bodily states and feelings mark unconscious cognitive appraisals, which stimulate emotional experience and significantly underlie behavior and decision making. While emotions have such a reciprocal relationship with other bodily functions, respiration is special because it can be voluntarily altered
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