Sequential Modulation of Cardiac Autonomic Control Induced by Cardiopulmonary and Arterial Baroreflex Mechanisms

Background—Nonhypotensive lower body negative pressure (LBNP) induces a reflex increase in forearm vascular resistance and muscle sympathetic neural discharge without affecting mean heart rate. We tested the hypothesis that a reflex change of the autonomic modulation of heartbeat might arise during low intensity LBNP without changes of mean heart rate.Methods and Results—Ten healthy volunteers underwent plasma catecholamine evaluation and a continuous recording of ECG, finger blood pressure, respiratory activity, and central venous pressure (CVP) during increasing levels of LBNP up to −40 mm Hg. Spectrum and cross-spectrum analyses assessed the changes in the spontaneous variability of R-R interval, respiration, systolic arterial pressure (SAP), and CVP and in the gain (αLF) of arterial baroreflex control of heart rate. Baroreceptor sensitivity was also evaluated by the SAP/R-R spontaneous sequences technique. LBNP began decreasing significantly: CVP at −10, R-R interval at −20, SAP at −40, and the indexes αLFand baroreceptor sensitivity at −30 and −20 mm Hg, compared with baseline conditions. Plasma norepinephrine increased significantly at −20 mm Hg. The normalized low-frequency component of R-R variability (LFR-R) progressively increased and was significantly higher than in the control condition at −15 mm Hg.Conclusions—Nonhypotensive LBNP elicits a reflex increase of cardiac sympathetic modulation, as evaluated by LFR-R, which precedes the changes in the hemodynamics and in the indexes of arterial baroreflex control

Stable Isotope Ratios in Hair and Teeth Reflect Biologic Rhythms

Biologic rhythms give insight into normal physiology and disease. They can be used as biomarkers for neuronal degenerations. We present a diverse data set to show that hair and teeth contain an extended record of biologic rhythms, and that analysis of these tissues could yield signals of neurodegenerations. We examined hair from mummified humans from South America, extinct mammals and modern animals and people, both healthy and diseased, and teeth of hominins. We also monitored heart-rate variability, a measure of a biologic rhythm, in some living subjects and analyzed it using power spectra. The samples were examined to determine variations in stable isotope ratios along the length of the hair and across growth-lines of the enamel in teeth. We found recurring circa-annual periods of slow and fast rhythms in hydrogen isotope ratios in hair and carbon and oxygen isotope ratios in teeth. The power spectra contained slow and fast frequency power, matching, in terms of normalized frequency, the spectra of heart rate variability found in our living subjects. Analysis of the power spectra of hydrogen isotope ratios in hair from a patient with neurodegeneration revealed the same spectral features seen in the patient's heart-rate variability. Our study shows that spectral analysis of stable isotope ratios in readily available tissues such as hair could become a powerful diagnostic tool when effective treatments and neuroprotective drugs for neurodegenerative diseases become available. It also suggests that similar analyses of archaeological specimens could give insight into the physiology of ancient people and animals

Heart rate variability : from bench to bedside

Power spectrum analysis of cardiovascular signal variability, and in particular of the RR period (heart rate variability, HRV), is a widely used methodology for investigating autonomic neural regulation in health and disease that can quantify the sympathovagal balance modulating the sinus node pacemaker. In some cases, it can also quantify the neural regulation of other organs or apparatuses. However, use of the correct methodology is crucial to extract the information embedded in the frequency domain. In numerous abnormal conditions, such as essential arterial hypertension, acute myocardial infarction and heart failure, the sympathovagal balance may be altered in basal conditions. However, a reduced responsiveness to an excitatory stimulus is the most common feature that characterizes numerous pathophysiological states. The attenuation of an oscillatory pattern can also reflect an altered target function, thus providing important prognostic markers. The general features of this approach correspond well to the needs of an internist attempting to envisage the involvement of the whole organism in a disease process

Heart rate variability is encoded in the spontaneous discharge of thalamic somatosensory neurones in cat

We studied the spontaneous discharge variability of thalamocortical somatosensory neurones in the awake cat in order to disclose its possible information content. The presence of slow (0.09–1.39 Hz) regular fluctuations in the discharge rate of these cells during the waking state has been previously reported. Oscillations in a similar frequency range are known to characterize the activity of central and peripheral neurones pertaining to the autonomic nervous system and the variability of heart period (RR interval variability).A surrogate data test, performed on our database, confirmed the presence of slow (0.05–1 Hz) non-random fluctuations in firing rate.Linear regression detected the presence of an inverse relationship between the values of RR interval and the concurrent levels of neural discharge.Frequency domain analysis indicated that a significant coupling between the two variability signals preferentially occurred in two frequency bands: in the frequency of the respiratory sinus arrhythmia and in correspondence with a slower rhythm (0.07–0.3 Hz), the two signals being in phase opposition in most of the cases.Coherent fluctuations could also be observed when epochs of evoked activity were analysed, while coupling between the two variability signals appeared to be disrupted after sleep onset.We conclude that RR interval variability, an internally generated dynamic related to basic visceral regulation, is encoded in the discharge of single somatosensory thalamocortical neurones during wakefulness. A possible interaction with the transmission of somatosensory information has to be evaluated

Causal coherence detects causality in the closed loop relationship between heart period and systolic arterial pressure variability series

Coherence is not able to evaluate the strength of the link between two interacting signals in a specific causal direction as it merges both feedback and feedforward arms of the closed loop describing the relationships between them. We propose a method to evaluate the degree of linear dependency between two variables at each frequency without losing causality. It is based on the definition of two causal coherence functions. The approach is tested on heart period and systolic arterial pressure beat-to-beat series recorded in 7 heart transplant recipients less than 14 months after heart transplantation. In healthy subjects these variables interact in closed loop but in heart transplant recipients the neural feedback path (from arterial pressure to heart period) is cut due to surgical procedure, while the mechanical path (from heart period to arterial pressure) is preserved. The significance of the coupling is assessed by means of a surrogate data approach.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe