Inhibition of the pontine Kölliker-Fuse nucleus abolishes eupneic inspiratory hypoglossal motor discharge in rat

The Kölliker-Fuse nucleus: a review of animal studies and the implications for cranial nerve function in humans

“…A total of 20 studies were identified that reported a relationship between KF and cranial nerve function, and these involved the trigeminal (6 studies) [14][15][16][17][18][19], vagus (9) [4,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] and hypoglossal (5) [28][29][30][31][32] nerves. The experimental techniques used in obtaining these findings are summarized in Table 1.…”

“…Hypoglossal nerve function related to the KF was reported in 5 papers in relation to tongue control [28][29][30][31][32], and in 3 of these, tongue protrusion was found to occur in the pre-inspiratory phase of respiration [28,30,31], and in one paper genioglossus was activated in response to hypercapnia [29]. The role of the KF in tongue control presumably acts to achieve upper airway dilatation.…”

“…This could be achieved clinically by air puff stimulation of the larynx, as employed in functional endoscopic evaluation of swallowing with sensory testing for laryngopharyngeal sensory testing [38] with repeated stimulation events. Dive reflex [14] Bradycardia [14,17,18] Respiratory depression [14,15,17] Rise in arterial blood pressure [14,18] Vagus (9) Laryngeal adductor control [4,21,24] Tonic laryngeal adduction [4,26] Laryngeal adductor reflex [21] Aspiration reflex [27] Expiration reflex [24] Cough [25] Rats (2) [20, 21] b Goats (2) [22,23] Swallowing function [20] Inhibition of nonnutritive swallowing [20,21] Inhibition of the resetting of respiratory rhythm during swallowing [22,23] Hypoglossal (5) Rats(3) [28,30,31] Cats (1) [32] Mice(1) [29] Tongue control [28] Tongue protrusion [32] Pre-inspiratory tongue protrusion [28,30,31] Genioglossus activation in response to hypercapnia [29] a More than one KF effect evaluated in one study b More than one KF effect evaluated in one study using the same animal species…”

“…The KF also has a role in tongue control [28][29][30][31][32]. This behaviour is important as it stabilizes the position of the tongue protrusor and retrusor muscles and prevents pharyngeal airway obstruction.…”

Neural mechanisms underlying respiratory rhythm generation in the lamprey

“…A possible difference is that the lamprey pTRG is located in the rostral rhombencephalon/isthmic region corresponding to the rostral pons, while the preBötC is located in the medulla. The pontine respiratory group and especially the Kölliker-Fuse nucleus have important respiratory functions, such as the regulation of the inspiratory-expiratory phase transition and the genesis of the postinspiratory activity (Dutschmann and Dick, 2012;Bautista and Dutschmann, 2014;Poon and Song, 2014 also for further Refs.). However, available data do not support the notion that they display functional characteristics similar to those observed in the pTRG and in the preBötC.…”