Synchrony Between Ventral Respiratory Column Expiratory Neurons is Altered during Fictive Swallow in Cat

Swallow and breathing are both fundamental functions for mammals. Anatomically, breathing and swallow share a common passageway, the pharynx. Precise coordination between swallow and breathing is essential for passing the bolus down into the esophagus, while preventing it entering the airways. The swallow central pattern generator and the respiratory CPG share common neural components. We hypothesized that the ventral respiratory column (VRC) respiratory functional network architecture alters during fictive swallow to produce the swallow breathing pattern. We stimulated the superior laryngeal nerve of paralyzed, decerebrated, ventilated cats to elicit swallow. Extracellular neuronal activity from multiple neurons was recorded simultaneously with microelectrode arrays during fictive swallow and breathing. A spike‐synchronization with bootstrap analysis was performed on the data, allowing us to identify temporal correlations (spike synchrony) between different neuron spike trains. SLN elicited fictive swallows changed synchrony of expiratory neurons (E neurons) in the VRC. During fictive swallows, the incidence of synchronized pairs of neurons decreased, although some pairs were more synchronized. The synchronized spike activity indicates a common swallow‐related synaptic input to these VRC E neurons in the respiratory neural network. The alterations of synchrony during fictive swallow suggest that the VRC E neurons were transiently “retasked” to generate a coordinated swallow breathing pattern.