11 Control of Breathing- Asleep Flashcards
Q: What is apnoea?
A: cessation of breathing
Q: What is the apnoeic threshold?
A: the threshold over which CO2 level has to be to make sure we breathe
Q: What’s the difference between other states where you’re also not normally responsive and sleep? Example?
A: (e.g. coma) is that it is REVERSIBLE
Q: Normally, how is sleep measured? What does it show when you’re wide awake?
A: electroencephalogram (EEG)
When you’re wide awake and paying attention, there is high frequency, low voltage activity
Q: What occurs muscularly when you are asleep? (2)
A: postural muscle activity falls and ocular muscle activity falls
Q: At what stage of sleep do you dream? What does brain activity show during this? but?
A: REM sleep
looks like you’re wide awake- However, you are functionally paralysed during REM sleep (this has probably evolved to stop you acting out your dreams)
Q: Summarise the stages of sleep.
A: You go through a period of light sleep and then into Stage 4 which is deep sleep - this is what makes you feel better and restored (in between is a semi-sleep stage)
Q: When you are functionally paralysed, what can be difficult? why?
A: breathing
If a patient breathes a lot with the accessory muscles (e.g. intercostals) then they have more difficulty using these muscles as they are functionally paralysed
Q: Which 2 muscles are spared the functional paralysis?
- Eye Muscles (this is what causes the rapid eye movements)
- Diaphragm (to allow you to breathe)
Q: What does a hypogram show during a night of sleeping? (3) If you have a patient who has difficulty breathing, what is different at the start of the night compared to the end?
A: -Usually, you fall asleep very quickly and then you stay in deep sleep
- After around 90 mins, you have a period of REM sleep
- As you go through the night, the amount of deep sleep decreases and the amount of REM sleep increases
their blood gases
Q: Draw a flow diagram that stems from sleep. (ventilation etc)
A: SLEEP at top (points at 1, 2 and 4
Respiratory centres (arrows from 1 and 2 point to it) right below then clockwise... -1. respiratory muscles -2. lung inflation -3. ventilation -4. change in PCO2/PO2
Q: What is sleep used as a model for?
A: to teach how breathing is controlled
Q: What is breathing controlled by? Describe the 4 steps.
A: by the respiratory centre which sends information to the respiratory muscles
muscle activity causes -> lung inflation -> ventilation -> changes in PCO2 and PO2
Q: Explain how there are inputs to the respiratory centre directly from the respiratory muscle.
A: If you suddenly breathe in deeply - there will be stretch receptor activity coming directly from the lungs as well as the change in chemosensitivity that the deep breath causes - these two inputs influence the respiratory centre
Q: What are the 2 ways in which breathing is controlled? Name another? Why is it different?
A: - Brainstem - reflex/automatic
- Cortex - voluntary/behavioural
Emotional Control of breathing comes from the limbic system which is a separate respiratory input
override the chemosensitivity to behaviourally control your breathing
Q: What does not control breathing when you’re asleep? What controls it?
A: cortical control (no motor cortex control or limbic system control)
brainstem (reflex/automatic)
Q: If you look at the motor homunculus, which area controls voluntary breathing?
What is shown on a PET scan specific to controlling breathing? (Draw)
A: area between the shoulder and the trunk
The hot spots seen on a PET scan tell us that there are some neurons in that region that are controlling breathing
Q: Why are brainstem respiratory neurones vital? Abundance? Where?
A: keep you alive (without you’d be unable to breathe)
relatively small number of these neurones on either side of the brainstem
found on the rostral-ventral-lateral medullary surface
Q: What’s the name given to the cluster of respiratory nuclei? What do these neurones also have? where?
A: Pre-Botzinger Complex
early firing and late firing neurones
As some neurones fire and stop firing, the other neurones start firing - they reciprocally inhibit each other (when one set fires, the other doesn’t)
(we don’t know where these neurones exist in humans)
Q: Name one way in which we measure breathing in humans. What is this? How is it useful?
A: lesion deficit models: using patients who’ve had bleeds in different parts of the brain ->
diagram shows a neural pathway going from the motor cortex, through the brainstem and the spinal cord and to the respiratory muscles
We don’t know if it goes directly through the brainstem neurones or whether there is a separate pathway coming from the brainstem or whether the two pathways (voluntary and involuntary) are connected -> If we study patients with various brain lesions, we can understand more about how it is all connected