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Chapter 1 - A Historical Account of the Neurology of Breathing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2025

By
Eelco F. M. Wijdicks
Edited by
Martin Groß ,
Eelco F. M. Wijdicks ,
Maxwell S. Damian  and
Oliver Summ
Martin Groß
Affiliation:
MEDIAN Clinic Bad Tennstedt
Eelco F. M. Wijdicks
Affiliation:
Mayo Clinic
Maxwell S. Damian
Affiliation:
Basildon University Hospitals
Oliver Summ
Affiliation:
Evangelisches Krankenhaus Oldenburg
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Summary

In times past, an inquisitive physician-scientist must have pondered these questions: How do we unknowingly breathe? What brain structures control our breathing? Why is breathing so perfectly rhythmic? Is there a lung-brain communication, and if so, how? But an even more fundamental question must have been: how much brain injury can one sustain before breathing stops?

It took two centuries (more or less) to answer the above-mentioned questions and gradually add small pieces to a large (still incomplete) puzzle. The respiratory center in the brainstem was identified and characterized in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Similarly, the function of the respiratory muscles and its neural connection with cranial nerves (CN) became better known.

This chapter recounts the history of the neurology of breathing and, thus, the discovery of the respiratory center and the respiratory mechanics. Sections of the chapter review experimental and clinical discoveries of those parts of the central and the peripheral nervous system involved with breathing while acknowledging their interplay.

Keywords

historybreathingcontrolneurologybrainnerveperipherycentralrespirationchemo

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Chapter
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Clinical Neurorespiratory Medicine , pp. 1 - 18
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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