PHYSIOL 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Proprioception, Extracellular Fluid, Respiratory Center
Document Summary
Lecture 23: control of breathing, exercise & altitude. There are homeostatic pathways that help maintain appropriate po2, pco2 and ph levels. We can voluntary change our breathing but it can also happen spontaneously. The pacemakes we talked about was smooth and cardiac muscle. The diaphragm and the intercostal are skeletal muscles. It"s not the muscles that are the pacemakers. We have neurons that are pacemaker neurons in the brain stem in the respiratory center that are going to control the motor neurons. They will generate action potentials at a given frequency which will control the motor neurons. All the inputs are sent to this center so that breathing can be changed in an involuntary way. The area c in the medulla oblongata is called the pre-botzinger complex which is the pacemaker. Set of neurons that will pace through the other motor neurons that it interacts with that control our respiratory muscles.
