Motor-Respiratory Coordination: Controlling the breath during exercise

This individual is using a template to produce a 5:3 motor-respiratory pattern
(five arms swings for every three breaths). We measured both breathing and
arm movements to find out what pattern was actually performed

Anyone who exercises recognizes that there is a natural tendency to pace the breathing to ones movement. That natural tendency, called motor-respiratory coordination, is important because it provides the body with a consistent supply of oxygen. Motor-respiratory coordination is common across a large variety of activities, but there are only a very few patterns that people actually use. A very common pattern is 2:1, in which a person completes two leg cycles (e.g., strides in running) or two arm cycles (e.g., pushes to the wheel rim during wheelchair propulsion) for every one breath. We developed visual displays that help individuals learn to coordinate their movement and breathing in other ways.

In a typical experiment, we ask individuals to pace their breathing to their arm movements to produce a required motor-respiratory ratio that was displayed on the wall in front of them (5:3 is depicted). The display serves as a template that identifies how movement and breathing cycles should be performed relative to each other. We found that, in comparison to the simple patterns typically observed, individuals were able to learn much more complex patterns using this display. The required patterns were not performed equally well, but their differences could be predicted using mathematics. The same math theory has been used to explain other patterns in the man-made and natural world. A bonus finding was that practicing one pattern resulted in the stabilization of many other patterns that had not been practiced. That result suggests that individuals can learn to control, with remarkable precision and flexibility, the communication between the motor and respiratory subsystems of their body.

People can expand their behavioral repertoire to include patterns of coordination that are far more complex than the ones that we commonly see. There are natural limitations on that ability, however, that place motor-respiratory coordination in the company of other natural phenomena.


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