Kevin Yackle, PhD, MD

Breathing is a seemingly simple, vital behavior that occurs about 12 times each minute. Surprisingly, this fundamental rhythm originates from a cluster of just several thousand neurons. Now, we seek to identify the key neuron(s) within that pace breathing and to determine how they are innately and volitionally “turned on” or “off” to speed up or stop breathing. We also seek to determine how they respond to opioids that stop breathing, the cause of a public health epidemic since the 1990s. 

As we experience daily, breathing is coordinated with many other behaviors, like speaking, swallowing, and chewing, and we seek to understand how the neural systems that create these behaviors are coordinated with breathing. Recently we have discovered a small collection of neuron, which we have named iRO, that are a central pattern generator (CPG) for murine vocalizations and are reciprocally connected with the breathing pacemaker. The iRO CPG is critical for correctly timing and producing the syllables of vocalizations during the expiratory part of the breath cycle.