Interferences between breathing, experimental dyspnoea and bodily self-consciousness

Abstract

Dyspnoea, a subjective experience of breathing discomfort, is a most distressing symptom. It implicates complex cortical networks that partially overlap with those underlying bodily self-consciousness, the experience that the body is one’s own within a given location (self-identification and self-location, respectively). Breathing as an interoceptive signal contributes to bodily self-consciousness: we predicted that inducing experimental dyspnoea would modify or disrupt this contribution. We also predicted that manipulating bodily self-consciousness with respiratory-visual stimulation would possibly attenuate dyspnoea. Twenty-five healthy volunteers were exposed to synchronous and asynchronous respiratory-visual illumination of an avatar during normal breathing and mechanically loaded breathing that elicited dyspnoea. During normal breathing, synchronous respiratory-visual stimulation induced illusory self-identification with the avatar and an illusory location of the subjects’ breathing towards the avatar. This did not occur when respiratory-visual stimulation was performed during dyspnoea-inducing loaded breathing. In this condition, the affective impact of dyspnoea was attenuated by respiratory-visual stimulation, particularly when asynchronous. This study replicates and reinforces previous studies about the integration of interoceptive and exteroceptive signals in the construction of bodily self-consciousness. It confirms the existence of interferences between experimental dyspnoea and cognitive functions. It suggests that respiratory-visual stimulation should be tested as a non-pharmacological approach of dyspnoea treatment.

Low-cost, easy-to-build noninvasive pressure support ventilator for under-resourced regions: open source hardware description, performance and feasibility testing

“…The applicability pilot study was carried out in healthy volunteers subjected to obstructive and restrictive breathing loads. This model is widely used in the literature to simulate the mechanical load of the respiratory system for investigating ventilation [19][20][21] and for simulating dyspnoea [26,27]. In fact, the level of obstruction-restriction we applied to our volunteers resulted in a breathing discomfort score (figure 6) similar to the ones set in recent reports to mimic dyspnoea by loaded breathing [26,27].…”

The “embreathment” illusion highlights the role of breathing in corporeal awareness

“…Our data imply that spontaneous actions, which are under limited voluntary control and serve a built-in purpose, induce a strong feeling of agency if appropriately mapped onto a virtual body. Of note, breathing also had an impact on the sense of body agency and ownership when the virtual body did not have a human-like appearance, confirming that respiratory signals are strong enough to induce changes in bodily self-consciousness even when visual features are not realistic (Allard et al 2017).…”

Breathing is coupled with voluntary action and the cortical readiness potential

“…We note, that breathing signals are ideally suited among other interoceptive inputs, to test coupling between interoception and voluntary action. They are more easily rendered conscious and more easily accessible for experimental manipulations, such as loaded breathing that has been shown to modulate breathing parameters, emotional processing, and self-consciousness 33,34 . Breathing is also intimately linked to a large range of motor activities, as well as cognitive activities such as language 35 .…”