Manipulation of Bicarbonate in the Carotid Body

Abstract

A hypothesis has already been presented that attempts to account for the convergence of hypoxia and hypercapnia to give impulses in the same afferent arterial chemoreceptor fiber. The nerve endings are regarded as acid receptors. Carbon dioxide, by becoming carbonic acid, naturally affects the environment, and hypoxia does so also because the mechanism that tends to hold the acidity of this environment constant fails in hypoxia. Here I shall briefly outline the behavior of chemoreceptors and the explanation offered by the hypothesis. Then I shall discuss particularly the way in which the hypothesis deals with adaptation of the response of chemoreceptors to a step change in P_aCO₂, a subject about which Bingmann has made some important observations (p. 277).