Brain Activations to Dyspnea in Patients With COPD

Thomas Reijnders; Thierry Troosters; Wim Janssens; Rik Gosselink; Daniel Langer; Paul W Davenport; Andreas von Leupoldt

doi:10.3389/fphys.2020.00007

Brain Activations to Dyspnea in Patients With COPD

Front Physiol. 2020 Jan 24:11:7. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2020.00007. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Thomas Reijnders¹, Thierry Troosters^{2

3}, Wim Janssens^{3

4}, Rik Gosselink², Daniel Langer², Paul W Davenport⁵, Andreas von Leupoldt¹

Affiliations

¹ Health Psychology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
² Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
³ Department of Chronic Disease, Metabolism and Aging, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
⁴ Respiratory Division, University Hospital Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
⁵ Department of Physiological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.

Abstract

We compared the perception and neural processing of respiratory sensations between 20 COPD patients and 20 healthy controls by means of respiratory-related evoked potentials (RREP) in the electroencephalogram (EEG). RREPs were induced by short inspiratory occlusions while 129-channel EEG was measured. COPD patients rated the occlusions as more intense and unpleasant (p's < 0.001) and showed higher mean amplitudes for the RREP components P1 (p = 0.0004), N1 (p = 0.024), P2 (p = 0.019), and P3 (p = 0.018). Our results indicate that COPD patients demonstrate greater perception and neural processing of respiratory sensations, which presumably reflects the highly aversive and attention-demanding character of these sensations for COPD patients.

Keywords: brain; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; dyspnea; electro encephalogram; respiratory related evoked potential.