Breathing Science Into Art

2Inspire is one of five projects that emerged from the first Biosciences Initiative Ideas Lab at the University of Michigan.

Based on the National Science Foundation’s model, the U-M event convened faculty from both within and outside of traditional life sciences fields to consider a central scientific challenge. The goal was to stimulate creative research projects that capitalize on the full breadth of expertise across the university.

“One of the great things about Michigan is that we’re a very large institution that has experts in basically anything you might want to study,” says Daniel Forger, a member of the Biosciences Initiative Coordinating Committee who organized the inaugural Ideas Lab. “SoI think this is an area where Michigan can clearly be a leader. How many other institutions have such strength across so many different fields?”

For three days in October 2019, 25 faculty members from 14 U-M schools, colleges and institutes gathered to determine how their collective expertise could incubate new research ideas related to the theme “Predicting Human Performance.”

“One of the central ideas that came up was to understand the relationship between the quality of breathing and the quality of performance,” recalls Sophia Brueckner, an assistant professor of art and design and the primary investigator on the 2Inspire project.

“And that’s how our team came together — we’re all interested in breathing but coming from totally different disciplines.”

The 2Inspire project draws its name from two meanings of inspire: to draw in breath, and to create in someone the urge to do or feel something.

“First we have to understand the quality of breath — we have to be able to measure it and communicate quality of breath to a performer,” Brueckner explains. “Then the next stage is to understand if that information can actually inspire better performance. Does it improve the way they play, the emotion of how they play, the artistry, the expression?”

To answer these questions, the multidisciplinary team is developing new technologies both to monitor breathing and to feed breath-related data back to performers in real time.

The most common systems for monitoring breath are either unsuitable for use outside of a laboratory setting or unable to accommodate the movement and posture changes of performing musicians.

Drawing on the expertise of biomedical engineer James Ashton-Miller, the team has devised a new system of wearable sensors that overcomes these challenges.

The sensors are incorporated into a discrete vest that can measure a variety of breathing parameters while musicians perform. During the first phase of the project, the team is using this system to collect and analyze baseline data from keyboardists at a variety of skill levels.

The project’s second phase relies on a biofeedback system devised by Brueckner, who specializes in designing wearables that communicate with people through the sense of touch (temperature change or gentle vibrations, for example). This system will deliver information to performers, in ways that don’t distract from their playing, about when and how they need to modify their breathing for optimal performance. In this phase, the team hopes to determine whether real-time feedback of breathing patterns can improve musical performance, and whether an expert’s breathing pattern can be used to guide a beginner.

“What we really want to do is find a way in real time to show the players the data of what’s happening with their lungs while they are performing, and therefore allow them to adapt to that,” Gascho explains. “And then we would simultaneously record that data, so a student could observe ‘this is how my teacher, or a fellow student, or an expert is breathing during this piece, so that’s something I want to emulate.’”

With his expertise in the neurological underpinnings of breath, Li is helping the team define the precise parameters they will need to measure to determine the quality of breath. And in a more conceptual sense, he and fellow scientist Muneesh Tewari bring an understanding of what is needed to design and document a reproducible scientific study, along with Tewari’s expertise in leading human subject studies.

“It’s been really enlightening to see how we each raise different questions about the same topics,” Li observes. “We have found that we really synergize well, because our different areas of expertise allow us to view things completely differently and educate each other on our own research or experiences.”

As the professional musician and self-described “guinea pig” for the project, Gascho is the first expert whose breath will be monitored to determine how breathing correlates with exceptional performance. Eventually, his students also will provide breathing data and use feedback data to measure the causal effect of breathing on performance quality.

The project is initially focusing on breathing and performance quality in harpsichordists, precisely (though perhaps counterintuitively) because their instrument does not require breath to operate. The team argues that such performers are likely to have a wider range of breathing characteristics, and thus can offer more data points for correlating breathing quality with performance quality.

“But ultimately, we’re really hoping to lay a foundation for how we can use this same approach to enhance performance in a lot of other domains,” Tewari says.

He has already begun envisioning how this type of effort could translate to helping patients manage intense cancer treatments. For example, can the breathing patterns of a patient who handled a particular cancer treatment well be used to help other patients persevere through difficult treatments?

“I would say more people than ever are aware of how technology can make you more stressed or tense, or of the harmful effects of technology,” Brueckner adds. “Well, if we know technology can shape our behavior and the way we feel, what if we actually harness those forces to do good things, like help people with resiliency through their breathing?”

For his part, Li is excited about how this research might be applied back in his lab at the LSI. In a bit of a reversal from the typical flow of scientific research, he plans to apply what the team learns from humans to the study of neurology in mice.

Li’s research has focused primarily on how the brain changes breathing patterns — how signals between different groups of neurons can generate distinct forms of breath.

But he is also interested in how breathing patterns can change the brain. Some studies in humans have shown that certain breathing patterns correlate with certain emotional or mental states. Li wants to explore how information about breathing pattern gets back to the brain and alters its state.

“Is there a neuronal component involved here? Is the full brain receiving certain inputs from your internal organs, or from the breathing control centers, to change the activity or state of the brain?” he asks. “That’s the type of thing we can investigate in animal models, but not in humans — really figuring out the cellular and molecular mechanisms at play.

Since, as Li puts it, “we can’t just ask animals to voluntarily breathe in a certain way,” he envisions synchronization

between his work with humans for 2Inspire and his future lab work. The knowledge gained from 2Insipre could inform new experiments in animal models, which can then offer new insights into the biological mechanisms taking place in humans.

“There’s a lot of really interesting science that can happen at the convergence of all these disciplines, when you get people who aren’t usually talking to each other to start talking,” Forger says. “This project is a perfect example.”