Sustained pressore responsiveness to prolonged hypothalamic stimulation in awake rats

Whether or not pressor responsiveness changes in unanesthetized rats during recurrent sympathetic excitation was determined by recording blood pressure and heart rate continuously while the posterior hypothalamus was stimulated repeatedly with constant currents. Because preliminary tests showed that telestimulation with a radio-controlled stimulator produced erratic responses, awake rats were routinely stimulated in a conventional manner by connecting them through wires to a square-wave stimulator. Although tachycardia was the most common chronotropic effect, bradycardia also occurred, and both responses were occasionally seen in the same rat at different times. Inhibition of chronotropic responses by combined pharmacologic blockage with propranolol and atropine did not affect corresponding pressure responses in normotensive rats. Renal and spontaneously hypertensive rats always had larger pressor responses than normotensive ones, and, in spite of individual variations, responsiveness generally remained unaltered during 3-6 h of repeated hypothalamic stimulation. These results indicate that in awake normotensive or hypertensive rats cardiovascular responses to posterior hypothalamic stimulation continue unabated even when stimulation is repeated for hours.

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Exaggerated sympathetic and cardiovascular responses to stimulation of the mesencephalic locomotor region in spontaneously hypertensive rats

AJP Heart and Circulatory Physiology ◽

10.1152/ajpheart.00479.2015 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 310 (1) ◽

pp. H123-H131 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Nan Liang ◽

Jere H. Mitchell ◽

Scott A. Smith ◽

Masaki Mizuno

Keyword(s):

Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats ◽

Cardiovascular Responses ◽

Fictive Locomotion ◽

Central Command ◽

Hypertensive Rats ◽

Mesencephalic Locomotor Region ◽

Spontaneously Hypertensive ◽

Pressor Responses ◽

Response To Exercise ◽

Stimulation Of

The sympathetic and pressor responses to exercise are exaggerated in hypertension. However, the underlying mechanisms causing this abnormality remain to be fully elucidated. Central command, a neural drive originating in higher brain centers, is known to activate cardiovascular and locomotor control circuits concomitantly. As such, it is a viable candidate for the generation of the augmented vascular response to exercise in this disease. We hypothesized that augmentations in central command function contribute to the heightened cardiovascular response to exercise in hypertension. To test this hypothesis, changes in renal sympathetic nerve activity (RSNA) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) in response to electrical stimulation of mesencephalic locomotor region (MLR; 20–50 μA in 10-μA steps evoking fictive locomotion), a putative component of the central command pathway, were examined in decerebrate, paralyzed normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Tibial nerve discharge during MLR stimulation significantly increased in an intensity-dependent manner in both WKY and SHR but was not different between groups. Stimulation of the MLR evoked significantly larger increases in RSNA and MAP with increasing stimulation intensity in both groups. Importantly, the increases in sympathetic and pressor responses to this fictive locomotion were significantly greater in SHR compared with WKY across all stimulation intensities (e.g., at 50 μA, ΔRSNA: WKY 153±31%, SHR 287±42%; ΔMAP: WKY 87±9 mmHg, SHR 139±7 mmHg). These findings provide the first evidence that central command may be a critical contributor to the exaggerated rise in sympathetic activity and blood pressure during exercise in hypertension.

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