Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Rhythmic behaviours like breathing are the result of activity in specific populations of brain cells. These cells are interconnected and have properties that allow them to produce this rhythmic behaviour, i.e. inspiration followed by expiration. I am interested to understand how the duration of inspiration is controlled. We know that the preBötzinger Complex is a key site that generates inspiration, but what we don't know is the mechanism in cells in preBötzinger Complex that turn off inspiration. Here, I test the hypothesis that during inspiratory activity a particular channel, i.e. KCNQ, is progressively turned on (i.e. activated). The effects of activating KCNQ are to make cells less active/excitable, therefore, if KCNQ gets turned on during inspiration, its effect may be to decrease cell excitability enough to turn off the inspiratory burst, thus controlling inspiratory burst duration. By understanding the mechanism by which this group of cells controls inspiratory burst duration, we will have a better understanding of how the brain produces breathing behaviour.