Airway afferents monitor the local chemical and physical micro-environments in the airway wall and lungs and send this information centrally to regulate neural circuits involved in setting autonomic tone, evoking reflex and volitional respiratory motor outflows, encoding perceivable sensations and contributing to higher order cognitive processing. In this mini-review we present a current overview of the central wiring of airway afferent circuits in the brainstem and brain, highlighting recent discoveries that augment our understanding of airway sensory processing. We additionally explore how advances in describing the molecular diversity of airway afferents may influence future research efforts aimed at defining central mesoscale connectivity of airway afferent pathways. A refined understanding of how functionally distinct airway afferent pathways are organized in the brain will provide deeper insight into the physiology of airway afferent-evoked responses and may foster opportunities for targeted modulation of specific pathways involved in disease.

气道传入者监视气道壁和肺中的局部化学和物理微环境，并集中发送此信息，以调节涉及设定自主神经，引起反射和自主呼吸运动流出，编码可感知感觉并有助于更高阶认知处理的神经回路。在此小型审查中，我们介绍了脑干和大脑中气道传入回路的中央布线的最新概述，重点介绍了最近的发现，这些发现增强了我们对气道感觉处理的理解。我们还探讨了描述气道传入分子多样性的最新进展如何影响旨在定义气道传入通路中央中尺度连通性的未来研究工作。