Key result
Mental arithmetic increases ventilation and breathing frequency but fails to improve ventilatory response reproducibility.
Why the study?
The interaction of mental tasks with hypercapnic ventilatory drive and their effects on ventilation and gas exchange in healthy subjects was studied to understand respiratory control mechanisms.
Does mental arithmetic task performance affect ventilation and hypercapnic ventilatory drive in healthy subjects?
Does mental arithmetic task performance affect ventilation and hypercapnic ventilatory drive in healthy subjects?
Mental arithmetic tasks increase ventilation and breathing frequency but do not alter the hypercapnic ventilatory drive or improve its reproducibility in healthy subjects.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Mental arithmetic may confound ventilatory testing; leaves open optimal protocols for reproducible chemoreflex assessment.
The effect of mental arithmetic tasks on ventilation, breathing pattern, oxygen intake and carbon dioxide output was studied during air breathing and carbon dioxide rebreathing in healthy subjects. 2. Ventilation and breathing frequency increased significantly on performance of the task during 4 min air breathing and 4 min rebreathing; tidal volume was unchanged. The slopes of the ventilatory, frequency and tidal volume responses to carbon dioxide changed little during task performance. 3. During 15 min air breathing, oxygen intake was unchanged with task performance. Carbon dioxide output increased significantly with task performance, as a result of wash-out of carbon dioxide from body stores by the increased ventilation. 4. Mental arithmetic had no effect on the coefficients of variation of the slope and position variables of the ventilatory, frequency and tidal volume responses to carbon dioxide. It is concluded that task performance does not improve the reproducibility of these responses.
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Rigg et al. (1977) studied Healthy. Mental arithmetic tasks vs. No task (implied) was evaluated on Ventilation, breathing pattern, oxygen intake and carbon dioxide output. Mental arithmetic tasks significantly increased ventilation and breathing frequency during air breathing and carbon dioxide rebreathing, but did not improve the reproducibility of ventilatory responses.
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