Groundbreaking brain discovery may lead to pill that gives the benefits of yoga

For those suffering with anxiety, a groundbreaking neurological discovery has been made that could one day help drastically alleviate worries.

Though there will be more beneficiaries than just the anxious, as the revelation may pave the way for future researchers to develop treatments for those with stress disorders, as well as a single pill providing some vital benefits of yoga.

Scientists Jinho Jhang, Seahyung Park, Shijia Liu, David D. O’Keefe and Sung Han, of the Salk Institute in San Diego, California, have realized there is a link between regulating emotions and voluntary breathing following studies on mice.

They published their findings in Nature Neuroscience last month, with the abstract reading: "Although breathing is primarily automatic, its modulation by behavior and emotions suggests cortical inputs to brainstem respiratory networks, which hitherto have received little characterization.

"Here we identify in mice a top-down breathing pathway from dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) neurons to pontine reticular nucleus GABAergic inhibitory neurons (PnCGABA), which then project to the ventrolateral medulla (VLM).

"dACC→PnC activity correlates with slow breathing cycles and volitional orofacial behaviors and is influenced by anxiogenic conditions."

Researchers from Salk Institute have found a pathway behind voluntary breathing and emotional regulation that could one day treat anxiety and stress disorders (Getty Stock Image)

It continued: "Optogenetic stimulation of the dACC→PnCGABA→VLM circuit simultaneously slows breathing and suppresses anxiety-like behaviors, whereas optogenetic inhibition increases both breathing rate and anxiety-like behaviors.

"These findings suggest that the dACC→PnCGABA→VLM circuit has a crucial role in coordinating slow breathing and reducing negative affect. Our study elucidates a circuit basis for top-down control of breathing, which can influence emotional states."

If, like me, you have no scientific background, I'll dumb it down a little for you.

Up until this discovery, there was little known about how our brain regulates breathing and the knock-on effect it has on anxiety - we only really know about subconscious breathing mechanisms.

While we don't really have to think about breathing, meditation is key in yoga and so slowing down your breathing is one way to self-soothe.

The authors of the study were looking to uncover conscious top-down mechanisms, which for us unscientific folk are just mental processes that use prior knowledge and expectations to interpret new information, that connect breathing with emotional regulation.

If your anxiety is treated in the future, you might have this little guy to thank (Getty Stock Image)

Anyway, after a series of tests they realized that a part of the brain - the brainstem region - initiates slower breathing while also initially identifying the 'breathing circuit' in a mouse's brain.

They then followed through on a theory where they discovered that when the 'anterior cingulate cortex', at the frontal region of the circuit, was connected to the brainstem region it calmed the mice down.

“Our findings got me thinking: could we develop drugs to activate these neurons and manually slow our breathing or prevent hyperventilation in panic disorder?” study co-author Jinho Jhang said, as per the Independent.

While Sung Han said.“I want to use these findings to design a yoga pill. It may sound silly, and the translation of our work into a marketable drug will take years, but we now have a potentially targetable brain circuit for creating therapeutics that could instantly slow breathing and initiate a peaceful, meditative state."