Mini Review: Central Organization of Airway Afferent Nerve Circuits

Airway afferents monitor the local chemical and physical micro-environments in the airway wall and lungs and send this information centrally to regulate neural circuits involved in setting autonomic tone, evoking reflex and volitional respiratory motor outflows, encoding perceivable sensations and contributing to higher order cognitive processing. In this mini-review we present a current overview of the central wiring of airway afferent circuits in the brainstem and brain, highlighting recent discoveries that augment our understanding of airway sensory processing. We additionally explore how advances in describing the molecular diversity of airway afferents may influence future research efforts aimed at defining central mesoscale connectivity of airway afferent pathways. A refined understanding of how functionally distinct airway afferent pathways are organized in the brain will provide deeper insight into the physiology of airway afferent-evoked responses and may foster opportunities for targeted modulation of specific pathways involved in disease.