Topic: Ventral Respiratory Column

Breathing is a vital sensorimotor behavior maintained throughout life that must be concurrently robust and flexible. Despite the relative simplicity of this behavior, the neural circuits that drive and maintain breathing are distributed throughout a large population of anatomically distributed and molecularly diverse neural population that compose the rostro-caudally extended Ventral Respiratory Column (VRC) The rhythmic properties of individual VRC nuclei are well known, yet technical challenges have limited the interrogation of the entire VRC population simultaneously. Here we introduce an e

Pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide (PACAP) is a neuropeptide involved in neonatal CO2-stimulated respiration. The ventral respiratory column (VRC), which contains the core inspiratory rhythm generator, receives PACAPergic inputs from the retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN) and expresses PAC1 receptor in neonates. However, in adults, the afferent origins of PACAPergic transmission to the VRC other than the RTN; and PACAP expression changes in response to chronic hypercapnic conditions are unknown.Using cholera toxin subunit B (CTB) mediated retrograde neuronal tracing and in situ hybri