One strong inhale through the nose ‘strengthens your brain and sharpens memories’

December 9, 2016

Researchers at Northwestern got 60 people to make rapid decisions in a test
Recording their breaths, they found reactions were sharper after a deep breath
The results were much better when breathing through the nose, not mouth

Mia De Graaf For Dailymail.com

and
Dailymail.com Reporter

Published:
15:22 EST, 8 December 2016

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Updated:
16:49 EST, 8 December 2016

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We’ve all had those moments where someone says ‘take a deep breath’, to calm you down and de-stress.

At your height of anger, it can be the most annoying thing to hear.

But new scientific research has explained exactly why and how a deep breath does wonders for your body.

According to a study by Northwestern University, one strong inhale through the nose strengthens your brain and makes your memories sharper.

Crucially, it depends on whether you inhale or exhale and whether you breathe through the nose or mouth.

One strong inhale through the nose ‘strengthens your brain and sharpens your memories’

In the study, individuals were able to identify a fearful face more quickly if they encountered the face when breathing in compared to breathing out.

Individuals also were more likely to remember an object if they encountered it on the inhaled breath than the exhaled one. The effect disappeared if breathing was through the mouth.

‘One of the major findings in this study is that there is a dramatic difference in brain activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during inhalation compared with exhalation,’ said lead author Christina Zelano, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

‘When you breathe in, we discovered you are stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, all across the limbic system.’

The researchers asked 60 subjects to make rapid decisions on emotional expressions in the lab environment while recording their breathing.

Presented with pictures of faces showing expressions of either fear or surprise, the subjects had to indicate, as quickly as they could, which emotion each face was expressing.

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When faces were encountered during inhalation, subjects recognized them as fearful more quickly than when faces were encountered during exhalation. This was not true for faces expressing surprise.

These effects diminished when subjects performed the same task while breathing through their mouths. Thus the effect was specific to fearful stimuli during nasal breathing only.

In an experiment aimed at assessing memory function — tied to the hippocampus — the same subjects were shown pictures of objects on a computer screen and told to remember them.

Later, they were asked to recall those objects. Researchers found that recall was better if the images were encountered during inhalation.

The findings imply that rapid breathing may confer an advantage when someone is in a dangerous situation, Zelano said.

‘If you are in a panic state, your breathing rhythm becomes faster,’ Zelano said.

‘As a result you’ll spend proportionally more time inhaling than when in a calm state. Thus, our body’s innate response to fear with faster breathing could have a positive impact on brain function and result in faster response times to dangerous stimuli in the environment.’

Another potential insight of the research is on the basic mechanisms of meditation or focused breathing. ‘When you inhale, you are in a sense synchronizing brain oscillations across the limbic network,’ Zelano noted.