Respiratory neuron responses to hypercapnia and carotid chemoreceptor stimulation.

In decerebrate, vagotomized, paralyzed, and ventilated cats, activities were recorded from the phrenic nerve and from respiratory units within the dorsal and ventral medullary respiratory nuclei and the pontile reticular formation. These unit activities were monitored during equivalent augmentations in peak integrated phrenic nerve activity induced by stimuli acting primarily on the peripheral or central chemoreceptors. These stimuli were intracarotid infusions of sodium cyanide or nicotine and exposure to hyperoxic hypercapnia, respectively. Both stimuli caused similar increases in activities for most dorsal nucleus inspiratory units. For units of the ventral medullary nucleus, augmentations in activity were only significant (inspiratory neurons) or were of greater magnitude (expiratory neurons) during hypercapnia. As opposed to medullary units, the discharge frequencies of many pontile units were unaltered or declined during both peripheral and central chemoreceptor stimulations. These results support the concept that excitatory influences from the peripheral and central chemoreceptors are not equally distributed among all groups of brain stem respiratory neurons.