The fundamental things apply. “The Peptidergic Control Circuit for Sighing,” recently published in the prestigious journal Nature, has made us rethink our fundamental belief that sighs are only “long, deep breaths expressing sadness, relief or exhaustion.” Often prompting someone to say, “What’s wrong?” As it turns out, sighs “also occur spontaneously every few minutes to

by Ronald G. Wiley, M.D., Ph.D., Departments of Neurology and Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN  and C. J. Vierck, Department of Neuroscience, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA Degeneration of the cholinergic basal forebrain (CBF: medial septum, diagonal band of Broca, nucleus basalis of Meynert/substantia innominata) is a prominent