Speaker
Description
Breathing is a vital, involuntary behavior that must remain robust while adapting to changing physiological demands. This poses a challenge for the control of breathing. The preBötzinger complex (preBötC) is a heterogeneous neuronal network responsible for driving the inspiratory rhythm. While neuromodulators such as norepinephrine (NE) allow it to be both robust and flexible for all living beings to interact with their environment, the basis for how neuromodulation impacts neuron-specific and network-level properties remains poorly understood. In this talk, I will present our recent work on neuromodulatory control of respiratory rhythms, with a focus on NE. By modeling NE effects on key intrinsic parameters, we show how it differentially modulates different neuronal subtypes. At the network level, we demonstrate that both the organization of intrinsic properties and synaptic interactions critically shape population activity. Together, these results provide a multiscale perspective on how neuromodulation regulates network state underlying respiratory rhythm generation in the preBötC.
