Investigating the Effect of Yoga-based Breathing Styles on the Human Brain, With a Focus on Memory

April 16, 2024 updated by: Universität des Saarlandes

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if yoga-based breathing styles could improve memory performance in adult persons without relevant prior experience in yoga, meditation or similar disciplines and without existing health problems which could hinder the implementation of the breathing exercises.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

  • Can the memory performance get better ?
  • Can the subjective stress level be reduced ?

Participants will complete a memory test while doing a specific nasal and oral breathing.

They will complete a two-week training period after the test with daily nasal or mouth breathing training or no training at all, depending on the group, the are divided into.

Researchers will compare the effect of different breathing styles on memory ability among themselves.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn about the effect of yoga-based breathing styles on the human brain regarding memory performance in adult persons without relevant prior experience in yoga, meditation or similar disciplines and without existing health problems which could hinder the performance of the breathing exercises.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

  • Is there an improve of memory performance through performing the controlled yoga-based breathing styles ?
  • Is there a relevant reduction of the subjective stress level through performing the controlled yoga-based breathing styles

Participants will complete a memory test while performing controlled nasal and oral breathing.

They will complete a two-week training period after the test with daily nasal or mouth breathing training or no training at all, depending on the group assignment.

Researchers will compare the nasal breathing group to the mouth breathing and the comparison group to see if the nasal breathing results in a significant improvement of the memory capacity.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

75

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Locations

  • Germany
    • Saarland
      • Homburg, Saarland, Germany, 66421
        • Recruiting
        • Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, Saarland University Medical Center
        • Contact:
        • Contact:

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Willingness to take on the 2-week exercises but no new athletic or meditative activities
  • Yoga-naive and without significant prior experience in various meditative or athletic disciplines that ostensibly involve elements of breath control
  • Access to a device with internet access
  • Signing of the consent form to participate in the study

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Known clinically relevant internal or neurological diseases, especially if associated with chronic pathological oxygenation (e.g. COPD, severe bronchial asthma, sleep apnea, but also CKD).
  • History of drug or alcohol abuse
  • Known psychiatric illnesses that currently require therapy (e.g., pronounced claustrophobia)
  • Medication that could falsify the data collected
  • Lack of consent to take note of possible incidental findings
  • known epileptic seizures, which could be intensified by the visual insertion of the stimuli

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Basic Science
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control group
no intervention
Experimental: Nose-breathing
Controlled nose-breathing
Other: Nose-breathing training
13 days of controlled nose-breathing training at a specific frequency with a duration of approximately 15 min a day
Active Comparator: Mouth-breathing
Controlled mouth-breathing
Other: Mouth-breathing training
13 days of controlled mouth-breathing training at a specific frequency with a duration of approximately 15 min a day

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Improvement of learned images
Time Frame: 2 weeks
Memory improvement by performing the home nasal breathing training. The correctness of the mapping is measured by the percentage correctness of the given answers in the memory test, which takes place promptly after the learning phase and 2 weeks later.
2 weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Reduction of subjective stress level
Time Frame: 2 weeks
The subjective stress level is determined by a subjective stress statement, before and after each learning and retrieval phase, at the first appointment and at the second after 2 weeks.
2 weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Universität des Saarlandes

Collaborators

University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Christoph Krick, Dr.rer.med., University of Saarland

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

June 3, 2023

Primary Completion (Estimated)

July 1, 2024

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 1, 2024

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 26, 2023

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 26, 2023

First Posted (Actual)

May 6, 2023

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

April 17, 2024

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 16, 2024

Last Verified

April 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • MST-Breathing Study

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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