VENTILATORY RESPONSES TO IMAGINED EXERCISE

We studied whether the ventilatory responses to imagined exercise are influenced by automatic processes. Twenty nine athletes produced menta l images of a sport event with successive focus on the environment, th e preparation, and the exercise. Mean breathing frequency increased fr om 15 to 22 breaths/min. Five participants reported having voluntarily controlled breathing, two of them during preparation. Twenty particip ants reported that their breathing pattern changed during the experime nt: 11 participants were unable to correctly report on the direction o f changes in frequency, and 13 incorrectly reported changes in amplitu de. This finding suggests that these changes were not voluntary in mos t participants and may therefore reveal automatic forebrain influences on exercise hyperpnea. However, these changes may also reflect nonspe cific processes (e.g., arousal) different from those occurring during actual exercise.