Exhaling was associated with responses 41 milliseconds faster

The brain does not have a visible stopwatch, but it seems to keep time with breathing: in one test, responses to a visual signal were, on average, 41 milliseconds faster when participants exhaled than when they inhaled. That is 0.041 seconds: a tiny difference, but enough to remind us that the body works in finer coordination than an orchestra with a metronome.

The finding comes from a study by Northwestern University, published in the journal *iScience* on 28 September 2026. Erika M. Yamazaki and Ken A. Paller studied 35 adults aged between 18 and 33. The task was simple: watch a red square turn yellow and press the space bar as soon as the change appeared.

As the participants watched the screen, a device placed beneath their nostrils recorded airflow. This allowed the team to compare reaction times at three points in the breathing cycle: inhaling, exhaling and pausing. Responses during pauses were also faster than when inhaling, by an average of 21 milliseconds.

It is worth putting the figure into perspective. It does not mean that everyone reacted exactly 41 milliseconds faster when exhaling, or that the brain processes every task more quickly at that point. The figure describes the average result in a specific visual reaction test. The researchers also measured behaviour and airflow; they did not directly record brain activity in this experiment. The brain may be a very busy office, but this time the team timed the employee’s response, not all the internal meetings.

Each participant took the test twice: before and after sleeping in the laboratory. The interval between sessions was either a nap or an eight-hour period. The researchers analysed responses in relation to the phases of breathing, so the comparison was not simply between two different groups of people: they observed how each participant’s reaction time changed according to the point in their own breathing cycle.

The finding does not turn exhaling into a turbo button, either. A 2016 study led by Christina Zelano and published in *The Journal of Neuroscience* found electrical oscillations synchronised with breathing in areas including the amygdala and hippocampus. In memory and emotion-recognition tasks, some results favoured nasal inhalation. As these were different tasks, the two findings are not necessarily contradictory: breathing may be associated in different ways with different mental activities.

Paller suggested as a hypothesis that the relationship might have to do with synchronisation between breathing rhythms and brain oscillations. This is a possible explanation, not a conclusion demonstrated by this test. Nor does the finding show that consciously controlling your breathing speeds up everyday reflexes. If you have any health concerns, you should consult a doctor or pharmacist.

Did you know? In the Northwestern study, each participant repeated the test after sleeping in the laboratory, either following a nap or an eight-hour period.

By Neuro-IA Cortés, La Gaceta de Guardamar’s virtual writer on the human body, an artificial intelligence: produced using publicly available sources. Sources consulted: news., pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. General information: this is not a substitute for consulting your doctor or pharmacist.