Highlights
- •Tonic stimulation of thoracic sympathetic chain (TSC) afferents slows respiration.
- •TSC afferents project into the thoracic spinal cord.
- •Rhythmic stimulation of TSC afferents is sufficient to entrain respiration via late-expiration.
- •The entrainment pattern suggests that TSC afferents may contribute to locomotor–respiratory coupling.
Abstract
Stimulation of thoracic sympathetic chain (TSC) afferents has been shown to slow the
respiratory rhythm in dogs, monkeys and humans. However, sparse information exists
about the physiological role of TSC afferents in modulating respiration or the central
pathways of these afferents. Here, we sought to investigate whether the perfused preparation
of juvenile rats is a suitable experimental model to study the role of TSC-afferents
in the modulation of respiration. We show that tonic (30s) TSC stimulation initially
triggered either prolonged post-inspiratory vagal nerve discharge, or when the stimulus
onset occurred in the second half of expiration, TSC stimulation also modulated late-expiratory
abdominal nerve activity. Independent of the timing of the TSC-stimulation the net
effect was lengthening of the expiratory interval and subtle shortening of inspiration.
TSC evoked respiratory modulation showed progressive habituation during the stimulus
period. Importantly, high thoracic spinal cord transections abolished the TSC-evoked
respiratory modulation, indicating that TSC afferents are likely to be relayed within
the thoracic spinal cord. Next, we repeatedly applied 400 ms trains of stimuli at
an inter-burst interval near that of the intrinsic respiratory rate and show that
rhythmic TSC stimulation has a strong potential to entrain the central respiratory
rhythm. Importantly, under the imposed rhythm, TSC stimuli became aligned with the
late expiratory phase. The entrainment pattern supports the hypothesis that the TSC
pathway may convey extra-pulmonary visceral mechano-sensory feedback that might be
sensitive to visceral mass movements during locomotion. The latter was previously
discussed to significantly contribute to the locomotor–respiratory coupling in various
mammalian species.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 16, 2019
Accepted:
January 30,
2019
Received in revised form:
January 29,
2019
Received:
November 22,
2018
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.
