Project
Neural gating of respiratory sensations in health and disease
Dyspnea (breathlessness) is the aversive key symptom in many common and debilitating diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and panic disorder. It is associated with severe disability, activity limitation, negative affect such as anxiety and depression and worse course of disease, which greatly reduces the quality of life in affected patients. Unfortunately, current knowledge on dyspnea and its treatment is markedly limited. The present research project is aimed at improving this urgently needed knowledge by examining the proposed central role of the brain’s neural gating mechanism of respiratory sensations in the perception of dyspnea in healthy volunteers and in patients with asthma, COPD and panic disorder. Specifically, we will investigate whether decreased neural gating is (a) related to increasing levels of dyspnea, (b) related to increased dyspnea-specific negative affect, (c) related to worse clinical patient status and (d) changeable during treatment. The multidisciplinary research team combines expertise from the fields of psychology, rehabilitation sciences, pneumology, psychiatry and neuroscience. In four related work packages, the team will use state-of-the-art scientific methods including psychophysiological, behavioral, neural, clinical and activity tests. The overarching aim is to contribute jointly to an improved multilevel and multidisciplinary model of dyspnea, which potentially leads to improved treatment options.