New neuroscience research shows how slowing your breathing alters your perception of the people around you

New neuroscience research shows how slowing your breathing alters your perception of the people around you

Deliberately slowing down your breathing rate alters how accurately you recognize emotions on the faces of people around you, depending on whether you are inhaling or exhaling. This top-down influence of respiration on visual perception reveals that the rhythm of our lungs actively shapes brain networks involved in making snap judgments. The findings were recently published in the European Journal of Neuroscience. The act of breathing sustains l…