Breathing and perception: how body rhythms shape brain signals and choices
Official title: CRCNS: Linking respiration and visual perception through brain-body integration
Funded at Mayo Clinic Rochester · NIH-11538489 · Data updated 2026-11-12
A Mayo Clinic team will study how breathing and other body signals influence brain activity and how we see and respond to things in the world.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Mayo Clinic Rochester NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Rochester, United States) |
| Project start | August 28, 2026 |
| Project end | July 31, 2031 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $361,732 |
| NIH project number | 1R01AT014237-01 |
| Project ID | NIH-11538489 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Individuals with neurological conditions requiring intracranial monitoring or healthy volunteers who can safely participate in neuroimaging and physiological measurements.
✕Less likely to help
People unable to participate in brain monitoring procedures or unable to tolerate the imaging protocols may not benefit.
What this research studies
This project will collect simultaneous brain and body data from people who are undergoing brain monitoring for clinical reasons and healthy volunteers performing vision tasks. We will record breathing, heart rate, blood oxygen, pupil size, and neural signals from scalp EEG or intracranial EEG, plus vascular responses with fNIRS, while participants complete visual tasks. By linking physiological rhythms to brain activity and task performance, we aim to uncover how respiration interacts with perception and decision making. The study will build a rich, multi-modal dataset that could reveal new markers of brain-body communication and inform future therapies that consider bodily states.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could improve our understanding of how breath and bodily signals influence thinking, potentially guiding new approaches for disorders where perception or decision making are affected.
How similar studies have gone: Prior studies have shown links between respiration and brain signals, but this project advances by integrating multiple modalities and tasks.
Where this research is happening
-
Mayo Clinic Rochester
Rochester, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Hermes, Dora — Mayo Clinic Rochester
- Study coordinator: Hermes, Dora
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.