Lesion of Serotonergic Afferents to the Retrotrapezoid Nucleus Impairs the Tachypneic Response to Hypercapnia in Unanesthetized Animals.

Hypercapnia promotes an increase in pulmonary ventilation due to the stimulation of brainstem chemosensory cells that are connected to the respiratory network. Among these cells are the raphe serotonergic neurons which widely send projections to distinct central respiratory compartments. Nevertheless, the physiological role of specific raphe serotonergic projections to other chemosensitive sites on the emergence of hypercapnia ventilatory response in vivo still remains to be elucidated. Here we investigated whether the ventilatory response to hypercapnia requires serotonergic inputs to the chemosensitive cells of the retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN) in the ventrolateral medulla. To test this, pulmonary ventilation was evaluated under baseline conditions and during hypercapnia (7% CO2) in unanesthetized juvenile Holtzman rats (60-90 g) that received bilateral microinjections of either vehicle (control) or anti-SERT-SAP (0.1 mM, 10 pmol/100 nl) toxin in the RTN to retrogradely destroy serotonergic afferents to this region. Fifteen days after microinjections, baseline ventilation was not different between anti-SERT-SAP (n = 8) and control animals (n = 9). In contrast, the ablation of RTN-projecting serotonergic neurons markedly attenuated the hypercapnia-induced increase in respiratory frequency which was correlated with reduced numbers of serotonergic neurons in the raphe obscurus and magnus, but not in the raphe pallidus. The increase in tidal volume during hypercapnia was not significantly affected by anti-SERT-SAP microinjections in the RTN. Our data indicate that serotoninergic neurons that send projections to the RTN region are required for the processing of ventilatory reflex response during exposure to high CO2 in unanesthetized conditions.

GABAergic neurons of the medullary raphe regulate active expiration during hypercapnia.

The parafacial respiratory group (pFRG), located in the lateral aspect of the rostroventral lateral medulla, has been described as a conditional expiratory oscillator that emerges mainly in conditions of high metabolic challenges to increase breathing. The convergence of inhibitory and excitatory inputs to pFRG and the generation of active expiration may be more complex than previously thought. We hypothesized that the medullary raphe, a region that has long been described to be involved in breathing activity, is also responsible for the expiratory activity under hypercapnic condition. To test this hypothesis, we performed anatomical and physiological experiments in urethane-anesthetized adult male Wistar rats. Our data showed anatomical projections from serotonergic (5-HT-ergic) and GABAergic neurons of raphe magnus (RMg) and obscurus (ROb) to the pFRG region. Pharmacological inhibition of RMg or ROb with muscimol (60 pmol/30 nL) did not change the frequency or amplitude of diaphragm activity and did not generate active expiration. However, under hypercapnia (9-10% CO2), the inhibition of RMg or ROb increased the amplitude of abdominal activity, without changing the increased amplitude of diaphragm activity. Depletion of serotonergic neurons with saporin anti-SERT injections into ROb and RMg did not increase the amplitude of abdominal activity during hypercapnia. These results show that the presumably GABAergic neurons within the RMg and ROb may be the inhibitory source to modulate the activity of pFRG during hypercapnia condition.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Medullary raphe has been involved in the inspiratory response to central chemoreflex; however, these reports have never addressed the role of raphe neurons on active expiration induced by hypercapnia. Here, we showed that a subset of GABA cells within the medullary raphe directly project to the parafacial respiratory region, modulating active expiration under high levels of CO2.

Raphe Pallidus is Not Important to Central Chemoreception in a Rat Model of Parkinson's Disease.

Central chemoreceptors are primarily sensitive to changes in CO2/H+, and such changes lead to intense breathing activity. Medullary raphe and retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN) neurons are candidates for central chemoreceptors because they are unusually pH sensitive. The pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease (PD) is related to the reduction of neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) that express dopamine, although other neurons can also be degenerated in this pathology. In rodent models of PD, we showed an impairment of the hypercapnia ventilatory response due to a reduction in the number of RTN chemosensitive neurons. Here, we aimed to investigate if serotonine-expressing neurons in the Raphe pallidus/parapyramidal region (RPa/PPy) are also involved in the modulation of breathing during central chemoreception activation in a PD animal model. PD was induced in male Wistar rats with bilateral injection of 6-OHDA (6-hydroxydopamine; 24 µg/µl) into the striatum, which leads to a reduction in the catecholaminergic neurons of the SNpc by 89%. In PD animals, we noticed a reduction in the number of RPa neurons that project to the RTN, without a change in the number of hypercapnia-activated (7% CO2) raphe neurons. The PD animals that received injection of the toxin saporin anti-SERT into the RPA/PPy region did not show a further reduction of respiratory frequency (fR) or ventilation (VE) at rest or during hypercapnia challenge. These experiments demonstrate that serotonergic neurons of RPa/PPy are not involved in the breathing responses induced by central chemoreceptor activation in a PD animal model.