| Research Abstract |
We have completed a software and performed analyses of the actual biological respiratory activities recorded on experimental animals to confirm the utility and ability of the program.
1. Development of a software : With a high-leveled program language, Signal BASIC - No. 5 (NEC San-ei) which runs on a laboratory computer, 7T17 (NEC San-ei), we wrote a program package designated as "RESPACK-17 version 1.0". This program is consisted of the following 7 functional modules that can : i) convert the respiratory signals (e. g., efferent discharges of the phrenic nerve) to digital signals at a high-sampling rate, ii) detect the respiratory activity, iii) automatically measure the respiratory cycles and calculate the statistics, iv) estimate the auto and cross powerspectral density functions for respiratory activities, v) display the result on CRT and output to graphic printers or XY-plotters, vi) write the results on and read from floppy disks, and vii) communicate with personal computers via RS-232C protocol and send the results in ASCII format.
2. Animal experiments and data analysis : We have recorded the efferent discharges of the phrenic nerves in artificially ventilated rabbits and stored them on magnetic tapes. A quantitative off-line analysis of the respiratory activities was carried out. To test whether RESPACK-17 can quantitatively and sensitively evaluate the changes in the respiratory activity caused by drugs, pentobarbital, morphine and naloxone were administered. We could successfully evaluate the over-all respiratory activity discriminating the changes in i) respiratory rhythmicity, ii) rhythm stability, and iii) the inspiratory motor activity. As the result of the analyses, it was shown that the effects of these drugs that act on central respiratory mechanisms might have different mode and mechanism of action on the neural network responsible for generation of respiratory rhythm and of the inspiratory motor activity.
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