Prior exposure to hypoxic-induced apnea impairs protective responses of newborn rats in an exposure-dependent fashion: influence of normoxic recovery time

Acute perturbation of Pet1-neuron activity in neonatal mice impairs cardiorespiratory homeostatic recovery

Cardiorespiratory recovery from apneas requires dynamic responses of brainstem circuitry. One implicated component is the raphe system of Pet1-expressing (largely serotonergic) neurons, however their precise requirement neonatally for homeostasis is unclear, yet central toward understanding newborn cardiorespiratory control and dysfunction. Here we show that acute in vivo perturbation of Pet1-neuron activity, via triggering cell-autonomously the synthetic inhibitory receptor hM4D_i, resulted in altered baseline cardiorespiratory properties and diminished apnea survival. Respiratory more than heart rate recovery was impaired, uncoupling their normal linear relationship. Disordered gasp recovery from the initial apnea distinguished mice that would go on to die during subsequent apneas. Further, the risk likelihood of apnea-related mortality associated with suppression of Pet1 neurons was higher for animals with baseline elevated ventilatory equivalents for oxygen. These findings establish that Pet1 neurons play an active role in neonatal cardiorespiratory homeostasis and provide mechanistic plausibility for the serotonergic abnormalities associated with SIDS.

Our survival depends on our heart and lungs working together to supply our cells with oxygen and remove carbon dioxide waste. The brain coordinates this process by controlling the activity of the heart and lungs. Yet sometimes a person may experience an event called an apnea and briefly stop breathing. If this happens, oxygen levels in the body fall while carbon dioxide levels rise. This in turn triggers a recovery process called autoresuscitation, which includes a series of large breaths or gasps, and each gasp is accompanied by increased heart rate due to specialized parts of the nervous system. This response usually restores normal breathing.

Failure of autoresuscitation may underlie many cases of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS (also known as “cot death” or “crib death”). SIDS is the leading cause of death in young infants in the western world, and many infants who die from SIDS show abnormalities in the brain cells that produce a chemical called serotonin. Evidence suggests that serotonin helps control breathing. This raised the question: does the autoresuscitation recovery response rely on serotonin-producing neurons?

To find out, Dosumu-Johnson et al. used one-week-old mouse pups that had been genetically engineered to respond to an injected drug by rapidly inhibiting their serotonin neurons. These animals are about the same age in mouse terms as infants at greatest risk for SIDS (~2-4 months of age). Inhibiting serotonin neurons made it harder for the mouse pups to recover from artificially induced apneas. Although their heart rate showed largely normal recovery – at least at first – their breathing did not. They took fewer gasps, and were more likely to die following such episodes.

These findings shed new light on how young animals control their breathing and heart rate when mounting an autoresuscitation recovery from an apnea. The observed uncoupling of breathing and heart rate recovery responses suggests that different brain cells and circuits control the two. The results also suggest that abnormalities in the activity of serotonin neurons may make infants more susceptible to SIDS. As well as offering a possible explanation to families who have lost a child to SIDS, these findings could be used to develop screening tools to identify other infants at risk. They also point to potential cellular targets for drugs that could ultimately help prevent further cases.

Control of breathing in invertebrate model systems

The invertebrates have adopted a myriad of breathing strategies to facilitate the extraction of adequate quantities of oxygen from their surrounding environments. Their respiratory structures can take a wide variety of forms, including integumentary surfaces, lungs, gills, tracheal systems, and even parallel combinations of these same gas exchange structures. Like their vertebrate counterparts, the invertebrates have evolved elaborate control strategies to regulate their breathing activity. Our goal in this article is to present the reader with a description of what is known regarding the control of breathing in some of the specific invertebrate species that have been used as model systems to study different mechanistic aspects of the control of breathing. We will examine how several species have been used to study fundamental principles of respiratory rhythm generation, central and peripheral chemosensory modulation of breathing, and plasticity in the control of breathing. We will also present the reader with an overview of some of the behavioral and neuronal adaptability that has been extensively documented in these animals. By presenting explicit invertebrate species as model organisms, we will illustrate mechanistic principles that form the neuronal foundation of respiratory control, and moreover appear likely to be conserved across not only invertebrates, but vertebrate species as well.

Fast oscillations during gasping and other non-eupneic respiratory behaviors: Clues to central pattern generation

The mammalian nervous system exhibits fast synchronous oscillations, which are especially prominent in respiratory-related nerve discharges. In the phrenic nerve, they include high- (HFO), medium- (MFO), and low-frequency (LFO) oscillations. Because motoneurons firing at HFO-related frequencies had never been recorded, an epiphenomenological mechanism for their existence had been posited. We have recently recorded phrenic motoneurons firing at HFO-related frequencies in unanesthetized decerebrate rats and showed that they exhibit dynamic coherence with the phrenic nerve, validating synchronous motoneuronal discharge as a mechanism underlying the generation of HFO. In so doing, we have helped validate the conclusions of previous studies by us and other investigators who have used changes in fast respiratory oscillations to make inferences about central respiratory pattern generation. Here, we seek to review changes occurring in fast synchronous oscillations during non-eupneic respiratory behaviors, with special emphasis on gasping, and the inferences that can be drawn from these dynamics regarding respiratory pattern formation.

Selective loss of high-frequency oscillations in phrenic and hypoglossal activity in the decerebrate rat during gasping

Respiratory motor outputs contain medium-(MFO) and high-frequency oscillations (HFO) that are much faster than the fundamental breathing rhythm. However, the associated changes in power spectral characteristics of the major respiratory outputs in unanesthetized animals during the transition from normal eupneic breathing to hypoxic gasping have not been well characterized. Experiments were performed on nine unanesthetized, chemo- and barodenervated, decerebrate adult rats, in which asphyxia elicited hyperpnea, followed by apnea and gasping. A gated fast Fourier transform (FFT) analysis and a novel time-frequency representation (TFR) analysis were developed and applied to whole phrenic and to medial branch hypoglossal nerve recordings. Our results revealed one MFO and one HFO peak in the phrenic output during eupnea, where HFO was prominent in the first two-thirds of the burst and MFO was prominent in the latter two-thirds of the burst. The hypoglossal activity contained broadband power distribution with several distinct peaks. During gasping, two high-amplitude MFO peaks were present in phrenic activity, and this state was characterized by a conspicuous loss in HFO power. Hypoglossal activity showed a significant reduction in power and a shift in its distribution toward lower frequencies during gasping. TFR analysis of phrenic activity revealed the increasing importance of an initial low-frequency “start-up” burst that grew in relative intensity as hypoxic conditions persisted. Significant changes in MFO and HFO rhythm generation during the transition from eupnea to gasping presumably reflect a reconfiguration of the respiratory network and/or alterations in signal processing by the circuitry associated with the two motor pools.

Mice with Blunted Hypoxic Ventilatory Response are Susceptible to Respiratory Disturbance during Hypoxia

Hypoxia causes a life-threatening situation, and the ventilatory response to hypoxia plays an important role in preventing death. We have hypothesized that persons with a blunted hypoxic ventilatory response may have a weak defense response to hypoxic episodes and be susceptible to fatal respiratory disturbances. However, precise correlations between the hypoxic ventilatory response and respiratory disturbances are not well understood. In the present study we examined the hypoxic and hypercapnic ventilatory responses in nine inbred mouse strains (A/J, AKR/N, BALB/c, C3H/He, C57BL/6, DBA/2, NZW, SWR/J, and 129Sv). Breathing frequency, tidal volume and minute ventilation of unanesthetized and unrestrained mice were assessed by whole body plethysmography. Age-matched mice were exposed for 3 min to 10% O(2) in N(2) gas or 10% CO(2) in hyperoxic gas to determine the acute ventilatory response to chemical stimuli. Basal respiratory variables and hypoxic ventilatory responses differed among the strains, but the hypercapnic ventilatory response did not differ. The hypoxic ventilatory response was the highest in AKR/N mice and the lowest in SWR/J mice. These findings suggest that genetic factors may have influenced the hypoxic ventilatory response but not the hypercapnic ventilatory response. To examine the effects of severe hypoxic stress on the respiratory cycle, we exposed the strain with the highest or lowest hypoxic ventilatory response to 6% O(2) in N(2) until the onset of apnea. The "appearance time of apnea", which is defined as the time from the hypoxic loading to the onset of apnea, was shorter in the SWR/J strain than in the AKR/N strain. We suggest that a lower hypoxic ventilatory response may be a risk factor for apnea under hypoxia.