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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 101/6/2943    most recent 91305.2008v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Web of Science (1) Google Scholar Articles by Nuding, S. C. Articles by Lindsey, B. G. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Nuding, S. C. Articles by Lindsey, B. G.

Pontine–Ventral Respiratory Column Interactions Through Raphé Circuits Detected Using Multi-Array Spike Train Recordings

¹Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology and ²Neuroscience Program, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of South Florida College of Medicine, Tampa, Florida; ³Departments of Medicine and ⁴Neurosciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; and ⁵Department of Physiology and Biophysics, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York

Submitted 10 December 2008; accepted in final form 13 March 2009

Recently, Segers et al. identified functional connectivity between the ventrolateral respiratory column (VRC) and the pontine respiratory group (PRG). The apparent sparseness of detected paucisynaptic interactions motivated consideration of other potential functional pathways between these two regions. We report here evidence for "indirect" serial functional linkages between the PRG and VRC via intermediary brain stem midline raphé neurons. Arrays of microelectrodes were used to record sets of spike trains from a total of 145 PRG, 282 VRC, and 340 midline neurons in 11 decerebrate, vagotomized, neuromuscularly blocked, ventilated cats. Spike trains of 13,843 pairs of neurons that included at least one raphé cell were screened for respiratory modulation and short-time scale correlations. Significant correlogram features were detected in 7.2% of raphé–raphé (291/4,021), 4.3% of VRC–raphé (292/6,755), and 4.0% of the PRG–raphé (124/3,067) neuron pairs. Central peaks indicative of shared influences were the most common feature in correlations between pairs of raphé neurons, whereas correlated raphé–PRG and raphé–VRC neuron pairs displayed predominantly offset peaks and troughs, features suggesting a paucisynaptic influence of one neuron on the other. Overall, offset correlogram features provided evidence for 33 VRC-to-raphé-to-PRG and 45 PRG-to-raphé-to-VRC correlational linkage chains with one or two intermediate raphé neurons. The results support a respiratory network architecture with parallel VRC-to-PRG and PRG-to-VRC links operating through intervening midline circuits, and suggest that raphé neurons contribute to the respiratory modulation of PRG neurons and shape the respiratory motor pattern through coordinated divergent actions on both the PRG and VRC.

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				S. C. Nuding, L. S. Segers, R. Shannon, R. O'Connor, K. F. Morris, and B. G. Lindsey Central and peripheral chemoreceptors evoke distinct responses in simultaneously recorded neurons of the raphe-pontomedullary respiratory network Phil Trans R Soc B, September 12, 2009; 364(1529): 2501 - 2516. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]