BIOBEHAVIORAL CORRELATES OF ADDED LOADS IN LUNG DISEASE

慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）对医疗有重大影响。 美国的统计数据。 例如，慢性呼吸道疾病 疾病是增长最快的十大主要原因， 死亡，以每年1.4%的速度上升。 患者的主要抱怨 慢性阻塞性肺疾病是呼吸困难（喘不过气），但呼吸的作用， 肺部疾病患者呼吸紊乱的感觉， 不太了解。 有许多心理物理学研究， 以及肺部疾病患者，旨在评估 使用阈值检测和幅度缩放的呼吸负荷 技术. 临床评定量表和运动试验也被使用 来量化不愉快的呼吸感觉的体验。 然而，在这方面， 关于身体刺激的潜在原因， 呼吸感觉或感觉属性所依据的 心理生理决定 这种混淆部分与限制有关 与呼吸感觉的行为测量有关。 为 例如，幅度缩放要求受试者注意单个 呼吸的感官方面密切指定的实验者。 在 其他感觉方式，感觉和认知大脑的记录 反应有助于理解知觉处理， 并且涉及患者中枢处理异常的识别 人口。 因此，本申请的具体目的是 来检测各种刺激引起的大脑感觉和认知反应， 呼吸动作 建议进行研究，以确定 由静态的、流阻的、 和增加呼吸的弹性负荷。 背景变化的影响 中央处理机械阻抗水平也是令人感兴趣的。 用表面记录的中枢神经系统活动（诱发电位） 电极将在年轻人和老年人以及患有 慢性阻塞性肺病 两者都是外源的（即，短潜伏期，体感诱发 电势）和内源电势（即，长潜伏期，人类 信息处理信号）将被检查。 这种活动将是 与标准心理物理量表的行为反应相关 任务 通过这种方式，呼吸感知之间的关系 将检查呼吸负荷的感觉和中枢处理。 这些发现可能在临床上用于识别 中枢相关的异常知觉反应的呼吸负荷， 阻塞性肺疾病患者，并更好地了解 这些患者的呼吸困难。

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has a major impact on medical statistics in the United States. For example, the chronic respiratory diseases are the most rapidly increasing of the top ten leading causes of death, rising at a rate of 1.4% per year. The major complaint of patients with COPD is dyspnea (breathlessness), but the role of respiratory sensations in the disordered breathing of patients with lung disease is poorly understood. There have been many psychophysical studies, in normals and in patients with lung disease, designed to assess the sensory impact of respiratory loads using both threshold detection and magnitude scaling techniques. Clinical rating scales and exercise tests have been used also to quantify the experience of unpleasant respiratory sensations. However, no consensus has emerged either about the physical stimuli underlying respiratory sensations or about which sensory attributes underlie psychophysical decisions. This confusion relates in part to limitations associated with behavioral measures of respiratory sensations. For example, magnitude scaling requires that the subject attend to a single sensory aspect of breathing closely specified by the experimenter. In other sensory modalities, recordings of sensory and cognitive brain responses have contributed to the understanding of perceptual processing, and to the identification of central processing abnormalities in patient populations. Accordingly, the specific aim of the present application is to examine both sensory and cognitive brain responses elicited by various breathing maneuvers. Studies are proposed to determine the nature of central, respiratory-related signals elicited by static, flow-resistive, and elastic loads added to breathing. Effects of changes in the background level of mechanical impedance on central processing are also of interest. Central nervous system activity (evoked potentials) recorded with surface electrodes will be compared among young and old adults and patients with COPD. Both exogenous (i.e., short-latency, somatosensory evoked potentials) and endogenous potentials (i.e., long-latency, human information processing signals) will be examined. Such activity will be correlated with behavioral responses for standard psychophysical scaling tasks. In this way, the relationship between perception of respiratory sensations, and central processing of respiratory loads, will be examined. These findings could prove useful clinically in the identification of central correlates of aberrant perceptual responses to respiratory loads in patients with obstructive lung disease, and to greater understanding of the problem of breathlessness in these patients.