Ventilatory Long-Term Facilitation at Rest Increases the Feedforward Contribution to Subsequent Exercise Ventilatory Responses.

The respiratory control system exhibits neural plasticity, adjusting future ventilatory responses based on experience. We tested the hypothesis that ventilatory long-term facilitation induced by hypercapnic acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH) at rest enhances subsequent ventilatory responses to steady-state exercise. Fourteen healthy adults (age = 27 ± 5 years; 7 males) participated in the study.