We will see the influence of respiration on the brain, and its ability to manage cognitive and emotional circuits, the influence of diet on the balance of the intestinal microbiota and the contagion capacity when listening to people with stress.
[Music] [Sound] one of the most known techniques since thousands of years ago to regulate our emotions and regulate our mental states and in particular for the regulation of stress has always has always been the breathing, the respiratory techniques it has to be said that until practically four or five years ago the influence that breathing had breathing on cognition was for the scientific world practically unknown it was thought that obviously the brain knows how to we are breathing but that this knowledge of the respiratory pattern that we were having did not had anything to do with the cognitive or emotional processes or emotional processes because it makes then practice in five years ago it was published in the journal science which is one of the is one of the most prestigious journals in the world
scientific an article that was very revolutionary and that is that it located in the brain an area that was a kind of a sort of a whistle blower that tells the rest of the brain how we're breathing and that information of how we're breathing the brain uses it to interpret to change the cognitive processes was surprising because that area of the brain was located in one of the most important regions of the brain deepest regions of our brain we know that we have the cortex we have the most emotional regions and the most the brain stem the brain stem it's a very visceral control area it's the most evolutionarily ancient and it is a little bit the most distant from the cognitive processes because inside the brainstem of the brainstem there are two structures that are key to the influence for the influence that respiration has on the brain one of them is the locus coeruleus which owes its name to the fact that it is a structure of blue color blue color the locus coeruleus which was already it was already known that it had a lot to do with what we are called the noradrenergic circuits that is those that are activated when something generates us a lot of motivation when we are very alert to something, this is essential for the attention processes we pay more attention to that which motivates us that which calls to us we pay more attention to that which calls our attention, not to that which has produced in us a shot of noradrenaline there all the time
our cognitive resources are going to be very alert this is the word that we we use in neuroscience to be alert when we we manage our attention as the william james to control the attention is to own our mind we make our resources neuronal resources are localized sustained in a single process our mind as it is is absolutely constantly interfered with it suffers both external and internal interference and we need mechanisms to block these interferences interference, one of the processes that has been that have been found to help us to maintain our attention and therefore to therefore to keep us alert is the breathing every time we take a deep breath we're activating those noradrenaline circuits
and this is very important for example for those who you dedicate yourselves to be instructors
of meditation in any process in any class class approximately after 15 minutes it is said that we have already lost about 70% of the ability to sustain the attention that fall of the processes
cognitive attentional processes is related to the drop of the endocrine noradrenergic circuitry then as it is decaying that falls exponentially we become more susceptible of being caught up in an interference at about 15 minutes 15 minutes practically for sure that we've lost 70 percent of the class
that's a time that is critical to reactivate the norepinephrine circuits to reactivate the attentional attentional mechanisms to return to that moment of consciousness to be alert and as does the respiration as the breathing does because the locus coeruleus is one of the systems that most activates the processes of alertness in our brain our brain that is to say the recharging of our of the neuronal mechanisms that underlie attention and the locus attention and the locus coeruleus is discovered and this is what is published in the science journal in 2014 it's discovered that the locus coeruleus is connected to a complex that is called the pre-botzinnger the pre-botzinnger complex thanks to the researcher who discovers it doctor botzinnger the pre-botzinnger complex is a very small structure that projects to not only the emotional parts of the brain but also to the cerebral cortex parts of the brain
when we breathe according to how we are breathing breathing the breathing pattern that we are taking everything as it is if we breathe through the nose if we breathe through the if we breathe through our nose if we breathe through our mouth if we do full deep deep gasping breaths if the breath is high if the breath has a low rate if we breathe more through one nostril than the other all that nostril than the other one all that information is essential for the brain and that's the information that the pre-botz complex information that the pre-botzinnger complex gives to the brain
transmits to the rest of the brain this article as I say is published in the journal neicer which was made well describing what was the neuroanatomy of respiration was done in an animal study to be able to see their neuroanatomy and what they saw in this work is that it's electrically modulated and they go electrically electrically stimulated altered the activity of the pre-botzinnger complex
of the pre-botzinnger complex could make the animals to have a greater capacity of attention, memory memory and emotion processing this is absolutely novel and very revolutionary for the world of revolutionary for the world of neuroscience
by I want to say that one of our most visceral so more visceral processes was affecting the processes higher cognitive processes not of our brain what has been seen in neuroanatomy is that the respiration through the connecting pathways of the pre-botzinnger complex activates the emotional systems and this what means that depending on the way we are breathing we can make our response to the breathing we can make our response to an emotion is stronger or less strong this is what we call neuronal activation to the same emotional stimulus not all people respond with the same people respond with the same impetus this is what we call what we call that reactivity that response that response that neuronal valence according to how we are breathing as we are more likely to react a lot to an emotion or the other way around we are more likely to react a lot to an emotion
moderating our response to emotions then let's see what breathing patterns we are referring to
but the anatomical pathways that come out are afferent and efferent circuits
from the pre-botzinnger nucleus were not only reaching the emotional emotional circuits also reached parts of the frontal parts of our brain and that's where I was was shown to me scientifically because it was already I say that this is already known thousands of years ago, it was scientifically scientifically demonstrated that respiration is able to modulate both attention and memory
there are breathing patterns that make us make it easier for us to maintain and sustain attention
there are breathing patterns that make it easier for us to that our attention is therefore more susceptible to interference, so in any given yoga book does not remind us that the person a wandering mind is also a breath
wandering mind is also a breath that drifting this is something that we have heard many, many times and this many, many times and this article was a little bit of a the scientific proof of that and one of the great interests that of the great interest that was aroused by the influence of the neuroanatomy of breathing the influence that breathing has on our of breathing on our brain activity was to see how it affected the processing of emotions emotions and in italy, Dr
celano led a research project on research that was very well publicized and very beautiful in the that showed that we can only we are only capable of to regulate the response of emotions when we we breathe through our nose not when we breathe through the mouth apart from the hygienic advantages of breathing through the nose because we know that the nose has different layers it's first the yellow layer yellow layer and then the red layer when we we are breathing in the air and everything that's in it everything that carries the air enters into us
when we breathe in through our mouth there's no filter and all that goes inside of us many times there is no filter
the pathogens that are present in the air cause our adenoids to become our adenoids to become inflamed and this then causes an immune response apart from the alterations that alterations that produce all the musculature orofacial but when we breathe through the nose when we have first that yellow layer which is called yellow because it's a little bit warmer it acts as a thermal a thermal barrier that makes a lot of those pathogens don't get into us after the yellow layer is the red layer which is even warmer
has a greater filtering capacity so that breathing through the nose is breathing through the nose is beneficial for our immune system because it makes it so that it doesn't have to be constantly fighting against all of the pathogens that we put in our body and many of us live in urban environments and not with high doses of pollution and pollution has been has been seen that it activates our immune system a lot immune system is one of the factors that most influences on the health of our intestinal microbiota which is we already know that in turn has an impact on the endocrine and nervous endocrine system and the nervous system and this is one of the most the things that neuroscience or neuroscience of well-being of well-being or the neuroscience of style that in order to control for example our chronic stress or anxiety chronic stress or anxiety levels as well
we have to take care of the environment in which we live
if we live in environments that are very organized with high concentrations of pollution and we can't avoid that because one of the things that we the best thing we can do to benefit our physical and physical as well as mental health is to breathe more for our the nose than through the mouth, but what Dr
Celia's neuroimaging neuroimaging team of Dr
celano in italy is that when we breathe through our nose, we have the ability to modulate the activity of the amygdala
the amygdala, which is one of the areas of the brain that most influences the neuroscience of well-being
is the one that gives emotional content to the experience that we are living is perhaps the most important area of the amygdala
important or what else we can shape in order to learn how to regulate stress it has been seen that people with stress as we have said well they have one in an amygdala which is more functional which has a lot more hemodynamic electrical and biochemical activity and it also grows in thickness when we have stress chronic and we have habituated our amygdala to be very reactive to to be very reactive to always have a lot of activity it's very difficult to shut it up, don't you notice the brain? you have to remember that as it almost always happens in biology systems are very inertial and as judson A
brewer says as Judson A
Brewer says, which is one of the most important great researchers in the neuroscience of well-being wellness and the neuroscience of meditation
our brain is a habit system if we have habituated our habituated our amygdala to react and to be already to be present and to judge everything that happens to us then the the amygdala is going to react but the good thing is that it is there are many studies that have shown that with a few weeks of any technique that help us to regulate our emotions and especially those especially those that are based on programs that are based on to reduce stress within a few weeks we have already succeeded in modulating reduce retract the activity of our amygdala because one of the factors that we can factors that we can do for example to control chronic stress or to control the stress that stress that we have at certain times and that is being detrimental to us is to be able to breathe through the nose
breathing through the nose makes it so that the activity that the amygdala responds to it
mouth activity don't have responses on the amygdala this is the result that the group of Dr
Celano's group arrived at where they showed clearly the hemodynamic activity of the amygdala when we breathe through we breathe through our nose and when we breathe through our the mouth we can only reach the amygdala if we breathe through the nose
we breathe through the nose the breaths through the mouth not another one of the studies that came out of these from this research showed us that certain breathing patterns that favor the memory processes processes of memory making full breaths makes us have greater memory capacity but there was one trick that was very very interesting and very and that is that our memory capacity is greater when we are breathing in if we want to remember something that is very important you say wait moments you breathe in through the nose because that's the moment when our brain is much more receptive to remember receptive to remembering when we're breathing through the mouth or through the nose at that time the brains are not brains are not as permeable to that which is we want to remember and that we want to attend to therefore I've one of the ways that could most increase our attention and memory capabilities is to make inspirations that are longer and this took both a lot of studying the brain mechanisms of why brain mechanisms as to why techniques based on the breathing enhancement because they were effective not only to relax us but also to increase our cognitive abilities we take approximately ten to twelve breaths per minute to reach a respiration of about six breaths per minute is what is known as the slow breathing as slow breathing has been found to have many has been shown to have many benefits for the cardiovascular system for the endocrine system even the immune system but specifically for the cerebral system it has been seen that breathing and by not breathing I mean breathing in a way that is permanently take breaths per minute but that throughout the day and specifically at certain times of the day and in certain situations when we see that we need a little bit of relaxation a little bit of relaxation or to control our states mental to do like a 15-minute episode where we're trying to slow down minutes episode where we're trying to slow down the breathing and bring it down to 6 breaths per minute regulates per minute regulates our emotions because we reach the amygdala but increase our attention and memory attention and memory capacities [Sound]
Audio:
Subtitles:
What are stress and anxiety?
What is an unhappy brain like?
Gut microbiota
Neuroscience of meditation
Do we make decisions with our body or with reason?
The influence of body posture on our mind
The silence of the brain: mental calmness
Stress is an emotion. How does our brain manage it?
Why does the brain need to listen to the body?
The influence of breathing on the brain