Fig 1.
A. Example of abdominal motor unit suppression with swallow. Note the positive wave on the esophageal pressure channel. This is indicative of the peristaltic wave during the esophageal phase of swallow. Swallow is denoted by the arrow, the first 2 cycles occurred on the inspiratory-expiratory phase transition, the third is during the inspiratory phase of breathing. B. Line graph depicting average change in abdominal EMG amplitude for each of the five animals. N denotes the expiratory cycle that contained the swallow, n-1 to n-3 are the three preceding expiratory cycles, and n+1 to n+4 are the four following expiratory cycles. Four of the five animals had evidence of a multi-cycle suppression. For this analysis only single swallows which had 3 respiratory cycles preceding and following the swallow were included in this analysis.
Table 1.
Fig 2.
An example of swallowing in a young healthy male, and the abdominal suppression across the entire expiratory period.
Note the small burst of abdominal activity at the beginning and the larger burst of abdominal activity at the end of the expiratory period was the consistent pattern.