Facilitation and Inhibition of Breathing During Changes in Emotion

Abstract

This article dealt with some issues concerning about links between respiration and emotion. Firstly, our recent studies on stress and respiration suggested that the central respiratory drive mechanism changes sensitively to psychological stressors, and also that the central timing mechanism and gas exchange system maintain stable during stress. Secondly, respiratory changes under detection of deception, which is thought to be stressful situation for a subject, are characterized by inhibitory breathing. Thirdly, these results obtained in several experiments suggested that some emotional experiences cause facilitation of breathing and that other emotional experience cause inhibitory breathing. Additional research is necessary to clarify which feeling induces facilitation of breathing and which feeling induces inhibitory breathing.