The fast exercise drive to breathe

This paper presents a personal view of research into the exercise drive to breathe that can be observed to act immediately to increase breathing at the start of rhythmic exercise. It is based on a talk given at the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting in a session entitled ‘Recent advances in understanding mechanisms regulating breathing during exercise’. This drive to breathe has its origin in a combination of central command, whereby voluntary motor commands to the exercising muscles produce a concurrent respiratory drive, and afferent feedback, whereby afferent information from the exercising muscles affects breathing. The drive at the start and end of rhythmic exercise is proportional to limb movement frequency, and its magnitude decays as exercise continues so that the immediate decrease of ventilation at the end of exercise is about 60% of the immediate increase at the start. With such evidence for the effect of this fast drive to breathe at the start and end of rhythmic exercise, its existence during exercise is hypothesised. Experiments to test this hypothesis have, however, provided debatable evidence. A fast drive to breathe during both ramp and sine wave changes in treadmill exercise speed and grade appears to be present in some individuals, but is not as evident in the general population. Recent sine-wave cycling experiments show that when cadence is varied sinusoidally the ventilation response lags by about 10 s, whereas when pedal loading is varied ventilation lags by about 30 s. It therefore appears that limb movement frequency is effective in influencing ventilation during exercise as well as at the start and end of exercise.