Breathtaking Science
Biologists home in on the brain area that drives respiration
By John Travis
Nearly 2,400 years ago in a treatise aptly titled “On Breath,” Aristotle posed a question that continues to captivate scientists today: “How can we account for the maintenance of the breath inherent in us, and for its increase?” In a suburb just outside Washington, D.C., Jeffrey C. Smith shows just how close modern researchers are to answering that question. With the aid of a powerful microscope, a computer monitor, a loudspeaker, and an array of other devices, he and a colleague use a minuscule electrode to listen in on the electrical activity of a paper-thin disc of living brain tissue. Every few seconds, the speaker crackles with sound.
That recurring noise is compelling evidence that biologists have finally identified what French physiologist Jean Pierre Marie Flourens more than a century ago called the noeud vital—the vital node. It’s the source of a body’s natural breathing rhythm.