Visual discrimination accuracy does not differ between nasal inhalation and exhalation when stimuli are voluntarily aligned to breathing phase

Abstract

This study investigated the possible enhancement of visual discrimination accuracy by voluntarily adjusting the timing of stimulus presentation to a specific respiratory phase. Previous research has suggested that respiratory phases modulate perceptual and cognitive processing. For instance, a fearful face was identified faster when presented during nasal inhalation than during nasal exhalation, which could be related to changes in neural oscillatory activity synchronized with breathing in through one's nose. Based on such findings, the present study asked 40 young adults to perform an emotional discrimination task consisting of distinguishing fearful vs. neutral faces and a physical discrimination task consisting of distinguishing high- vs. low-contrast Gabor patches during nasal respiration. Participants presented themselves with the stimuli to be judged in a designated respiratory phase by pressing a button. It was hypothesized that fear discrimination accuracy would be higher during inhalation than exhalation if sensitivity to emotional stimuli increased during inhalation. Conversely, if overall visual sensitivity was enhanced during inhalation, the identical effect was expected for contrast discrimination. The results indicated that discrimination accuracy did not differ between inhalation and exhalation phases in either task. This result provided no evidence that the respiratory phase affected visual discrimination accuracy when people adjusted the timing of stimulus presentation to the onset of inhalation or exhalation.