Breathing can be heavily influenced by pain or internal emotional states, according to a recent study by Assistant Professor Sung Han, first author Shijia Liu and colleagues. The team discovered how a neural circuit coordinates breathing with pain and negative emotions.
In this illustration, breathing is represented by the blue waves flowing along the airway, pain is represented by the red circles centered on the paw, and emotion is represented by the yellow entangled thoughts in the brain. Collectively, this artwork depicts the dynamic coordination of breathing with pain and emotion in mice.
This artwork, by Salk’s science illustrator Amy Cao, was selected to appear on the cover of the March 2, 2022, issue of the journal Neuron to accompany the Salk team’s paper.
