Control of discharge patterns of medullary respiratory neurons by pulmonary vagal afferent inputs.

Abstract

To provide a better understanding of the central mechanisms by which pulmonary afferents reflexly control breathing, the responses of single respiratory neurons to vagal afferent patterns were analyzed. Respiratory-related unit (RRU) recordings were obtained from inspiratory (I), expiratory (E), and phase-spanning neurons in the ventral medulla of halothane-anesthetized, paralyzed, ventilated, vagotomized, mongrel dogs. Electrical stimulation of the largest vagal fibers was used to reflexly alter I and E durations (TI and TE) and to present various temporal input patterns to RRU. The net response was quantified by taking the difference between cycle-triggered histograms (CTH) of activity obtained during an input and the spontaneous control (no input) CTH. For step frequency patterns confined to either the I or E phase, 127 responses in 41 neurons were analyzed. The average step response time was greater than 500 ms. In general the time courses of the control and test-input discharge patterns were linearly related to one another. For I neurons the slopes (beta) of these relationships were linear functions of the vagal step frequency (Fv). Linear relationships were also obtained for 1/TI vs. Fv and 1/beta vs. TI. These results suggest that the vagal control of the discharge patterns of these neurons and phase timing is mediated via a process similar to gain modulation.