Retention of lung distension information in pump cell spike trains

Respiratory control requires feedback signals from the viscera, including mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors. We previously showed that typical pulmonary stretch receptor (PSR) spike trains provide the central nervous system with approximately 31% of the theoretical maximum information regarding the amplitude of lung distension. However, it is unknown whether the spatiotemporal convergence of many PSR inputs onto second-order neurons (e.g., pump cells) results in more, or less, information about the stimulus carried by second-order cell spike trains. We recorded pump cell activity in adult, anesthetized, paralyzed, artificially ventilated rabbits during continuous manipulation of ventilator rate and volume to test the hypothesis that less information is carried by spike trains of individual pump cells than PSRs. Using previously developed analytic methods, we quantified the information carried by the pump cell spike trains and compared it with the same values derived from PSR data. Our results provide evidence that rejects our hypothesis: pump cells as a group did not carry significantly less information about the lung distension stimulus than PSRs, although that trend was implied by the data. By comparing the response variances with the theoretical minimum, we discovered that the trend toward information loss depends on response strength, with higher mean responses associated with larger response variances in pump cells than in PSRs. Thus spatiotemporal integration may result in information loss within certain analytic/stimulus parameters, but this is counterbalanced by the consistency of pump cell responses during brief integration times and/or low stimulus amplitudes, resulting in retention of total information.