ArticleComprehensive Physiology2021
Air Hunger: A Primal Sensation and a Primary Element of Dyspnea.
Article in Comprehensive Physiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 64 citations in OpenAlex.
- Methods and Applications in Respiratory Physiology: Respiratory Mechanics, Drive and Muscle Function in Neuromuscular and Chest Wall Disorders.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Pooled it
- Empathetic solicitude attenuates the affective and sensory dimensions of COPsychophysiology · 2025Trial
- Cardiorespiratory responses to muscle metaboreflex activation in fibrosing interstitial lung disease.Experimental physiology · 2022Trial
- Neural and behavioral correlates of consciousness: the welfare consequences of fatal hypobaric and hypercapnic hypoxia in laboratory mice.Lab animal · 2026Article
- Recovery-Targeted Supplemental Oxygen Enhances Performance and Attenuates Perceived Fatigue During Subsequent High-Intensity Swimming.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Physiology of nitrogen: A life or death matter.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
- Quantifying the welfare impact of air asphyxia in rainbow trout slaughter for policy and practice.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Multimodal physiological correlates of dyspnea ratings during breath-holding in healthy humans.European journal of applied physiology · 2025Article
- Air Hunger Far Exceeds Dyspnea Sense of Effort during Mechanical Ventilation and a Weaning Trial.American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine · 2025Article
- Target for Today: Air Hunger.American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine · 2025Article
- Dyspnea in young subjects with congenital central hypoventilation syndrome.Pediatric research · 2025Article
- Timing of activation of different inspiratory muscles during incremental inspiratory loading in healthy adults: A cross-sectional study.Canadian journal of respiratory therapy : CJRT = Revue canadienne de la therapie respiratoire : RCTR · 2025Article
- The use of high expansion foam for stunning and killing pigs and poultry.EFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority · 2024Article
- Influence of an Exercise-Specific Face Mask on Physiological and Perceptual Responses to Graded Exercise.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2024Article
- Dyspnoea in acutely ill mechanically ventilated adult patients: an ERS/ESICM statement.Intensive care medicine · 2024Article
- Blunted perception of breathlessness in three cases of low grade insular-glioma.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Failure to breathe persists without air hunger or alarm following amygdala seizures.JCI insight · 2023Article
- Distinguishing science from pseudoscience in commercial respiratory interventions: an evidence-based guide for health and exercise professionals.European journal of applied physiology · 2023Review
- Dyspnea in the ICU: It Is Difficult to See What Patients Feel.American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine · 2023Article
- Striving for humane deaths for laboratory mice: hypobaric hypoxia provides a potential alternative to carbon dioxide exposure.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The sensation that develops as a long breath hold continues is what this article is about. We term this sensation of an urge to breathe "air hunger." Air hunger, a primal sensation, alerts us to a failure to meet an urgent homeostatic need maintaining gas exchange. Anxiety, frustration, and fear evoked by air hunger motivate behavioral actions to address the failure. The unpleasantness and emotional consequences of air hunger make it the most debilitating component of clinical dyspnea, a symptom associated with respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases. In most clinical populations studied, air hunger is the predominant form of dyspnea (colloquially, shortness of breath). Most experimental subjects can reliably quantify air hunger using rating scales, that is, there is a consistent relationship between stimulus and rating. Stimuli that increase air hunger include hypercapnia, hypoxia, exercise, and acidosis; tidal expansion of the lungs reduces air hunger. Thus, the defining experimental paradigm to evoke air hunger is to elevate the drive to breathe while mechanically restricting ventilation. Functional brain imaging studies have shown that air hunger activates the insular cortex (an integration center for perceptions related to homeostasis, including pain, food hunger, and thirst), as well as limbic structures involved with anxiety and fear. Although much has been learned about air hunger in the past few decades, much remains to be discovered, such as an accepted method to quantify air hunger in nonhuman animals, fundamental questions about neural mechanisms, and adequate and safe methods to mitigate air hunger in clinical situations. © 2021 American Physiological Society. Compr Physiol 11:1449-1483, 2021.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.