Rhythms of the body, rhythms of the brain: Respiration, neural oscillations, and embodied cognition

Somogy Varga, Detlef H. Heck
2017 Consciousness and Cognition  
In spite of its importance as a life-defining rhythmic movement and its constant rhythmic contraction and relaxation of the body, respiration has not received attention in Embodied Cognition (EC) literature. Our paper aims to show that (1) respiration exerts significant and unexpected bottom-up influence on cognitive processes, and (2) it does so by modulating neural synchronization that underlies specific cognitive processes. Then, (3) we suggest that the particular example of respiration may
more » ... unction as a model for a general mechanism through which the body influences cognitive functioning. Finally, (4) we work out the implications for embodied cognition, draw a parallel to the role of gesture, and argue that respiration sometimes plays a double, pragmatic and epistemic, role, which reduces the cognitive load. In such cases, consistent with EC, the overall cognitive activity includes a loop-like interaction between neural and non-neural elements. (141 words) The emergence of cognitive science in the second half of the twentieth century offered a broad theoretical framework for understanding cognition. While its initial focus on abstract formal descriptions shifted to connectionist approaches based on neural models of cognitive architecture (Bermúdez, 2014; Haugeland, 1995; Thagard, 2013) , standard cognitive science shares a fundamental "locational" commitment: whether mental processes are best seen as abstract formal processes (though exclusively realized in the brain), or as activation patterns in neural networks, they unfold in the brains of cognizers and can be described in abstraction from the body (Clark, 2008; Rowlands, 2004; Shapiro, 2012) . Thus, the view is that while the organism's body and sensorimotor systems deliver sensory input and enable behavioral output, they do not shape cognitive processing in any significant and interesting way. In contrast, the relatively recent research program "embodied cognition" (EC) opposes the "locational" commitment, holding that at least some cognitive processes are best comprehended in terms of a dynamic interaction of bodily (non-neural) and neural processes (Foglia & Wilson, 2013) . That said, EC is not a unified area of research, and the various research projects usually subsumed under the EC label lack homogeneity, established definitions (M. Wilson, 2002) , and clarity about whether EC is conceived as complementing or providing an alternative to standard cognitive science. Central claims of EC are based on findings in several disciplines, including psychology, robotics, and neuroscience (see (Barsalou, 2010 ). To mention a few instructive examples, researchers have demonstrated that sensorimotor variables can influence cognitive tasks (
doi:10.1016/j.concog.2017.09.008 pmid:29073509 fatcat:adqkh2og3rauzjgq3iotdegjo4