Acute stress and anxiety can suppress pain, here we reveal a multi-nodal circuit in the brain that connects the two.

Opioids have distributed effects on the brainstem circuitry that controls breathing, including presynaptic and postsynaptic receptor-mediated inhibition of an excitatory circuit from the dorsolateral pons to the ventrolateral medulla.

Inspiratory rhythmogenesis is mediated by an emergent mechanism independent of bursts associated with motor output and is modulated by opioids, pointing to strategies for ameliorating opioid-induced respiratory depression.

Building on previous work (Faull et al, 2016), it shown that the different connectivity profiles of the individual columns of the human periaqueductal gray support their proposed roles in human threat behaviours, such as freezing or fight/flight.

Glutamatergic–cholinergic neurons in the postinspiratory complex are critical for swallow motor patterning and the coordination of swallow and breathing, which is disrupted by chronic intermittent hypoxia, a condition seen in many disorders associated with dysphagia and aspiration pneumonia.

A group of neurons in the medulla expressing the tachykinin precursor 1 promote rhythmic breathing, but also elicit substantial motor behaviors, suggesting a dual role for these neurons in the medulla.

A predominant but less studied sensory pathway for both vibrissa self-motion and touch inputs is shown to broadcast broadly to brainstem regions involved in regulation of autonomic functions as well as forebrain regions involved in expression of emotional reactions.

Respiratory alkalosis recruits the midline thalamus to provoke absence seizures.

Recordings from brainstem nuclei involved in chemosensory regulation of breathing in awake freely behaving mice show different complementary types of neuronal responses to hypercapnia in the retrotrapezoid nucleus and the rostral medullary raphe.