Project Details
Abstract
Different personalities or characteristics may modulate individuals’ mental states and also their
physiological functions. Human’s respiratory perception or awareness is associated with their
mental status and further dictate their subsequent behavioral responses. The fact that breathing is
normally not sensed, but only sensed when the ventilation is obstructed or attended to, suggests that
a “gate” exists between the autonamic respiratory oscillators and the higher cortical center.
Respiratory perceptual gating as one indicator of respiratory awareness can be tested with the
transient respiratory interruptions. This gating mechanism has been investigated by the
respiratory-related evoked potential (RREP) method with scalp surface electrodes. Recent studies
have showed that this frequency-based gating can be demonstrated with paired stimuli given within
one inspiration. The second stimulus (S2) elicited smaller evoked potentials than the first stimulus
(S1) in normal adults. The above evidence suggests the corresponding cortical areas of neuronal
activation in response to paired inspiratory interruptions. Different psychological manipulations
such as diseased state can modulate cognitive awareness of breathing. Past studies have
demonstrated that attending to affective picture series changed respiratory sensory gating
represented by the RREP peak amplitude S2/S1 ratio. Also, controlled attention was found to
modulate the RREP P300 peak gating ratio. However, it remains unclear how attending to external
emotional cues can modulate respiratory gating in people with different anxiety levels. It is also
unclear how attention regulating strategies manipulate individuals’ respiratory sensory gating ability.
The electrophysiological method provides excellent temporal evidence but little spatial information
with regards to the cortical areas activated with respiratory sensory gating. Therefore, the purpose
of this project is to systematically investigate the effect of spontaneous anxiety on respiratory
sensation, test the effects of attending to external emotional cues, and examine the modulation of
attention regulating strategy in respiratory sensory gating. First, we hypothesize that the paired
stimulation paradigm and the oddball stimulation paradigm would result in different cortical
activation patterns in the thalamus, somatosensory, and parietal cortex. Further, we expect that
people with high and low anxiety would show different cortical activation patterns. Secondly, we
will compare the effects of positive and neutral affect picture series on respiratory perception
between high and low anxious individuals. We hypothesize that attending to positive and neutral
affective picture series will lead to different activation in the corresponding cortical areas in
processing respiratory information. Finally, we will test the effect of attention regulating strategies
on respiratory sensory gating with both the fMRI technique and the RREP technique. We
hypothesize that with the attention regulating strategy of focusing on the S1, the individual will
show higher level of activation in the sensorimotor cortex and the parietal cortex. Our earlier
electrophysiological data serves as preliminary results and suggests the feasibility of this proposed
project. The significance of this work lies in the fact that psychological effects are fundamental to
our understanding to respiratory perception. We expect the results of this project to serve as a basis
for future respiratory perception studies in the mental health fields.
Project IDs
Project ID:PF10301-0111
External Project ID:MOST103-2420-H182-003-MY2
External Project ID:MOST103-2420-H182-003-MY2
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 01/01/14 → 31/12/14 |
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