Figure 2.

The LC integrates and regulates the chemosensitive and thermosensitive information flow in ectothermic non-mammals (left panel) and mammals (right panel). In both non-mammals and mammals, the decrease of pH enhances LC firing rate [108,109], which in turn promotes respiration and reduces retaining CO₂ [111]. Apart from this chemosensitivity-based negative feedback, the thermosensitivity of LC forms a regulatory pathway with respiration and temperature changes. In ectothermic non-mammals, the environmental temperature negatively regulates the basal firing rate of LC, but positively modulates the chemosensitivity of LC [100,101,105,107,120]. In mammals, body temperature change and LC activity reciprocally interact with each other [104,112,113,121,122]. Direct thermosensitivity of LC has been shown in non-mammals [100] but remains elusive in mammals. Created with BioRender.com.