Anyone who exercises notices that we naturally pace our breathing to our movement pattern. While running, for example, we may take four full strides for every breath (a ratio of 4:1). We use different ratios to ensure that sufficient oxygen is available for movement, thus coaches and trainers often instruct us to control our breathing during exercise deliberately. However, despite nearly four decades of research on motor-respiratory coupling, there have been no studies on this intentional control. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Polemnia Amazeen and Dr. Richard Hinrichs, together with breathing specialist Wendy Waxman, will investigate how people learn to coordinate their breathing and movements. A simple arm swinging task is used to maximize the variety of breathing-movement patterns that can be studied. Feedback displays encourage participants to focus their attention on relevant aspects of the breathing-movement coordination, and yoga practitioners are tested to identify aspects of breath training that improve control. Strategies for "learning for free" are identified when people who have practiced one breathing-movement pattern subsequently improve their performance of other patterns. Requiring people to engage in a competing, cognitive task during the breathing-movement task reveals whether attention is critical to sustaining coordination between breathing and movement. All findings are summarized within a mathematical model called the Farey tree, a model that has been applied successfully to the performance of polyrhythms (e.g., drumming). This research uses experimental techniques and theoretical tools from many different scientific fields and will integrate research and education through substantial student involvement. Its findings will improve the general understanding of motor coordination and learning theory and will enhance sports instruction and the creation of therapeutic techniques.
