Clinical trial NCT05846425: Investigating the Effect of Yoga-based Breathing Styles on the Human Brain, With a Focus on Memory
Official title: Investigating the Effect of Yoga-based Breathing Styles on the Human Brain, With a Focus on Memory
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: Hypoventilation
Hyperventilation
Keywords: Mnemonic similarity task
Yoga-breathing
Memory enhancement
Lead sponsor: Universität des Saarlandes
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2023-05-06
Enrollment: 75
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: Nose-breathing group, Mouth-breathing group, Control group
Primary purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE

Brief summary: The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if yoga-based breathing styles could improve memory performance in adult persons without relevant prior experience in yoga, meditation or similar disciplines and without existing health problems which could hinder the implementation of the breathing exercises.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

* Can the memory performance get better ?
* Can the subjective stress level be reduced ?

Participants will complete a memory test while doing a specific nasal and oral breathing.

They will complete a two-week training period after the test with daily nasal or mouth breathing training or no training at all, depending on the group, the are divided into.

Researchers will compare the effect of different breathing styles on memory ability among themselves.

Detailed description: The goal of this clinical trial is to learn about the effect of yoga-based breathing styles on the human brain regarding memory performance in adult persons without relevant prior experience in yoga, meditation or similar disciplines and without existing health problems which could hinder the performance of the breathing exercises.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

* Is there an improve of memory performance through performing the controlled yoga-based breathing styles ?
* Is there a relevant reduction of the subjective stress level through performing the controlled yoga-based breathing styles

Participants will complete a memory test while performing controlled nasal and oral breathing.

They will complete a two-week training period after the test with daily nasal or mouth breathing training or no training at all, depending on the group assignment.

Researchers will compare the nasal breathing group to the mouth breathing and the comparison group to see if the nasal breathing results in a significant improvement of the memory capacity.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Willingness to take on the 2-week exercises but no new athletic or meditative activities
* Yoga-naive and without significant prior experience in various meditative or athletic disciplines that ostensibly involve elements of breath control
* Access to a device with internet access
* Signing of the consent form to participate in the study

Exclusion Criteria:

* Known clinically relevant internal or neurological diseases, especially if associated with chronic pathological oxygenation (e.g. COPD, severe bronchial asthma, sleep apnea, but also CKD).
* History of drug or alcohol abuse
* Known psychiatric illnesses that currently require therapy (e.g., pronounced claustrophobia)
* Medication that could falsify the data collected
* Lack of consent to take note of possible incidental findings
* known epileptic seizures, which could be intensified by the visual insertion of the stimuli

Primary outcomes:
measure: Improvement of learned images
timeFrame: 2 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Reduction of subjective stress level
timeFrame: 2 weeks
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Homburg
country: Germany
facility: Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, Saarland University Medical Center
state: Saarland
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Saarland
name: Christoph Krick, Dr.rer.med.
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Zelano C, Jiang H, Zhou G, Arora N, Schuele S, Rosenow J, Gottfried JA. Nasal Respiration Entrains Human Limbic Oscillations and Modulates Cognitive Function. J Neurosci. 2016 Dec 7;36(49):12448-12467. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2586-16.2016.
citation: Klippenstein JL, Stark SM, Stark CEL, Bennett IJ. Neural substrates of mnemonic discrimination: A whole-brain fMRI investigation. Brain Behav. 2020 Mar;10(3):e01560. doi: 10.1002/brb3.1560. Epub 2020 Feb 3.
citation: Stark SM, Kirwan CB, Stark CEL. Mnemonic Similarity Task: A Tool for Assessing Hippocampal Integrity. Trends Cogn Sci. 2019 Nov;23(11):938-951. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.08.003. Epub 2019 Oct 6.