Figure 6. Phasing of steps relative to breaths has a significant effect on the duration of ventilatory transitions.

(A) Examples of ventilatory transitions timed with preferred and assistive phases of the step cycle, facilitating rapid transitions, and (B) timed with an avoided and antagonistic phases of the step cycle. Dashed vertical lines indicate zero-crossings of ventilatory transitions. The transition durations (T50) are calculated between the black dots indicating the times of 50% peak flows. (C) Transition times averaged across individuals (mean ± s.e.m), comparing breaths at ‘avoided’ and ‘preferred’ phase relationships. Preferred refers to the most used phase bin (e.g., see Fig. 5), and ‘avoided’ refers to the least used phase bin that was represented in the data.