Adaptation is the essential process by which an organism becomes better suited to its environment. The benefits of adaptation are well documented, but the cost it incurs remains poorly understood. Here, by analysing a stochastic model of a minimum feedback network underlying many sensory adaptation systems, we show that adaptive processes are necessarily dissipative, and continuous energy consu...

While orthostatic tachycardia is the hallmark of postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS), orthostasis also initiates increased minute ventilation (Ve) and decreased end-tidal CO(2) in many patients. We hypothesized that chemoreflex sensitivity would be increased in patients with POTS. We therefore measured chemoreceptor sensitivity in 20 POTS (16 women and 4 men) and 14 healthy controls (10 women ...

Hypoxic ventilatory and phrenic responses are reduced in adult rats reared in hyperoxia (60% O(2)) for the first month of life but not after hyperoxia as adults. In this study, we identified the developmental window for susceptibility to hyperoxia. Phrenic nerve responses to hypoxia were recorded in anesthetized, vagotomized, paralyzed, and ventilated Sprague-Dawley rats (aged 3-4 mo) exposed t...

Eric S Underbakke and Laura L Kiessling The EMBO Journal (2010) 29, 4237. doi:10.1038/emboj.2010.303 Correction to: The EMBO Journal (2010) 29, 3435–3436. doi:10.1038/emboj.2010.246 Since the publication of this paper, the authors have noticed errors in reference citations. On page 3436, left column, rows 24 and 32, the reference citations for ‘Sourjik and Berg, 2004’ should instead refer to ‘N...

Only the carotid chemoreceptors stimulate breathing during hypoxia in Man. They are also ideally located to warn if the brain's oxygen supply falls, or if hypercapnia occurs. Since their discovery ~80 years ago stimulation, ablation, and recording experiments still leave 3 substantial difficulties in establishing how important the carotid chemoreceptors are in controlling breathing during exerc...

Tumours arising in the chemoreceptor system are termed chemodectomas. Intrathoracic chemodectoma is a rare tumour, only 74 cases having been described by 1977.1 Systemic catecholamine secretion by an intrathoracic chemodectoma is very uncommon andwe have been able to trace only one other published case report of proven catecholamine secretion. We describe a second case and discuss briefly these...