Breathing during exercise in dogs - passive or active?. Ainsworth, Dorothy M., Curtis A. Smith, Kathleen S. Henderson, and Jerome A. Dempsey. Dept. Clinical Sciences; CVM-Cornell University; Ithaca, NY 14850 and The John Rankin Laboratory of Pulmonary Medicine, Dept. Preventive Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53705
APStracts 3:0130A, 1996.
The activation patterns of the costal and crural diaphragm and transversus abdominis (TA) muscle, and their relationship to esophageal pressure (Pes) changes and footplant were examined in five chronically-instrumented dogs who breathed at high frequencies at rest and during exercise. In two tracheostomized dogs, measurements were made of diaphragmatic length via sonomicrometry and of airflow, and related to diaphragmatic electrical activity and Pes. Dogs exhibited either a high frequency breathing pattern, characterized by Pes changes occurring at 2-6 Hz, or a mixed frequency breathing pattern characterized by low amplitude Pes oscillations (4-6 Hz) superimposed upon a slower breathing rate of 0.5-1 Hz. Regardless of the type of breathing pattern elected or of the various breathing:stride frequency ratios observed during exercise, decreases in Pes were always associated with phasic EMG activity of the costal and crural diaphragm and with phasic diaphragmatic muscle shortening. The TA EMG activity coincided with an increasing Pes from peak negative values in resting dogs and exhibited both an expiratory and a locomotory modulation during exercise. Although footplant may have contributed to some airflow generation when dogs utilized the mixed frequency pattern, these data demonstrate that the movement of air into and out of the lungs in stationary or exercising dogs requires phasic neural activation of the diaphragm and other respiratory muscles.

Received 7 August 1995; accepted in final form 26 February 1996.
APS Manuscript Number A863-5.
Article publication pending Journal of Applied Physiology.
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1996 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 13 March 96