Chemical respiratory stimuli can induce arousal from sleep, but the specific mechanisms involved have not been established. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that mechanoreceptor stimuli arising in the ventilatory apparatus have a role in the arousal responses to progressive hypercapnia and hypoxia by comparing arousal responses during spontaneous ventilation with those obtained when the inspiratory muscles were unloaded by mechanical ventilatory assistance. Studies were performed in three trained dogs in which the adequacy of inspiratory muscle unloading was verified by diaphragmatic electromyographic (EMG) recordings. In rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep the arousal threshold during progressive hypercapnia increased from 68.4 +/- 0.5 (SE) mmHg during spontaneous runs to 72.3 +/- 0.8 mmHg during mechanically assisted runs (P < 0.01). In contrast there were no changes in arousal responses to hypercapnia during non-REM (NREM) sleep or to hypoxia in either NREM or REM sleep. However, during the assisted hypoxic runs, EMG activity of the transversus abdominis muscle was increased compared with the unassisted runs; therefore, the effects on arousal threshold of unloading the inspiratory muscles may have been offset by increased loading of the expiratory muscles. The findings indicate that even in the absence of added mechanical loads, mechanoreceptor stimuli probably arising in the respiratory muscles contribute to the arousal response to hypercapnia during REM sleep.