Schedule of Events | Symposia

Directed breathing during sleep in healthy adults and potential applications to sleep apnea

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Erika M. Yamazaki¹, Hrayr Attarian², Phyllis C. Zee², Ken A. Paller¹; ¹Northwestern University, ²Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine

Respiration is easily controlled and manipulated during wakefulness, yet we lose this ease of respiratory control during sleep. Previous studies have found that when sounds associated with specific memories are reintroduced during sleep, those specific memories are reactivated. Some studies have also shown that behavioral responses can sometimes be elicited by sounds presented during sleep. Here, we sought to determine the extent to which a learned respiratory response can be reactivated and performed during sleep. We tested this question in 10 young, healthy participants who trained to synchronize their breathing to an auditory stimulus during wake over multiple days. Subsequently, the stimulus was reintroduced during sleep. The degree of synchronization of breathing to the sound and changes in respiration were measured. Our quantitative strategy identified multiple trials of apparently successful synchrony, but due to their rarity we cannot rule out that these reflect chance occurrences rather than genuine respiratory responses. Across all trials, we failed to observe systematic changes in respiratory measures in response to cues during sleep. Although behavioral reactivation was unclear overall in our initial study, variants of these procedures may be more successful at producing occasional responses. Furthermore, our study question opens the door to investigate cases of decreased respiratory control during sleep, such as in sleep apnea. Currently, we are in the early stages of using a modified protocol to determine whether auditory cues during sleep, following conditioning with those cues, can terminate partial or complete respiratory pauses in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

Topic Area: OTHER