A brainstem network mediating apneic reflexes in the rat.

Apnea is an important protective response to upper airway irritation, but the central mechanisms responsible for eliciting sensory-induced apnea are not well understood. Recent studies have emphasized the Kölliker-Fuse nucleus in producing apnea and proposed a trigeminoparabrachial pathway for mediating these reflexes. However, in our earlier study of apneic responses produced by glutamate stimulation in the dorsolateral pons, we found that apnea was elicited from the area just ventral to the Kölliker-Fuse nucleus, rather than within it. Because this region was not known to be involved in respiratory control, we combined chemical microstimulation with both anterograde and retrograde axonal tracing to characterize the sites in the pons that produce apneic responses. We found that apneic sites were consistently associated with the intertrigeminal region, between the principal sensory and motor trigeminal nuclei. Injections of anterograde tracer at these sites labeled terminals in the ventral respiratory group, in the ventrolateral medulla. Injection of retrograde tracer into this target region in the ventrolateral medulla disclosed a previously unrecognized population of neurons among the trigeminal motor rootlets. Injection of retrograde tracer into this intertrigeminal region demonstrated inputs from portions of the spinal trigeminal nucleus and the nucleus of the solitary tract that have been associated with producing sensory apnea. Our observations suggest that the intertrigeminal region receives a convergence of sensory inputs capable of driving apneic responses and that it may represent a common link between input from different portions of the airway and the respiratory neurons that mediate apneic reflexes.