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5 th International Meeting of the Brainstem Society , London , United Kingdom , December 09 – 10 , 2010

Background: The brain is primarily a massively parallel computer and the brainstem is no exception. Doubtless of vital importance to life, the brainstem centres controlling respiration continue to evade precise identification. Rett syndrome (RTT) is an interesting neurodevelopmental disorder that produces characteristic neurological and behavioural features. Clinical features include autistic traits, loss of purposeful hand movements, stereotyped hand movements and life threatening respiratory rhythm disturbances. The respiratory rhythm abnormalities of RTT include hyperventilation, breath holding, apneustic breathing, etc. Methods: We model normal mammalian respiratory rhythmogenesis as involving opposing sets of neurones, generating ‘neurocomputational threads’ to help model the respiratory rhythm abnormalities seen in RTT. We used Java 6 to implement concurrent multithreading of sequential slave threads for inspiration and expiration respectively, avoiding the need for a precise anatomic location for an inspiratory and expiratory centre. We allow threads to fail to generate and to lock in order to demonstrate pathophysiology. Results:Many respiratory abnormalities of RTT can be duplicated by our model. For example, loss of generation and/or sustenance of sequential threads duplicates apnea, failure of timely termination of inspiratory threads leads to apneustic breathing, etc. Discussion: Failure of replenishment of neurotransmitter stores may correspond to loss of ‘garbage collection’ of neurocomputational threads and failure of reuptake of neurotransmitters, to locking of these threads. Conclusions: RTT affords a unique window on the workings of the respiratory centre of the brainstem. Future work using concurrent multithreading can help unravel the nature of other clinical features such as speech disturbances and hand wringing stereotypies.